Following a fresh new rebrand, our client Pure challenged us to create a secondary splash of media coverage for its award-winning new outdoor speaker ‘Woodland’, and keep the momentum going post-launch. The campaign had to align with the brand’s new tone of voice and bring Pure into the lifestyle realm, while of course, getting the media talking. An added task was to drive visits to the Pure website for data capture and marketing goals.
The speaker in question is the perfect outdoor companion - waterproof, rugged, includes DAB radio and the ability to stream via Bluetooth, and comes in the perfect shade of woody green - made to be listened to while gardening, camping or exploring the wild.
Ensuring the campaign was aligned to Pure’s new positioning, we set out to create an activation that was focussed on being human-centric, providing a ‘joyful’ extra, creating a customer connection and gently rallying against technology (whilst remembering it is an audio brand). Looking to culture, and what was happening in the world, we spotted two things: 1. Old school hobbies were on the rise - ‘Twitching’ became massive during lockdown and new data showed this wasn’t just a fad, 2. The restorative power of being outdoors, and more notably, the sound of birdsong. This got us thinking about the relationship between Brits and their birds - are their soothing melodies one of the highlights of being outdoors? We conducted research, commissioned by Pure, to confirm just that. We also wanted to understand the UK’s knowledge of birds - with a generation increasingly disconnected from nature, can people recognise a blackbird from a starling? The answer: not so much.
Armed with research that identified that one of the UK’s favourite sounds of the outdoors is birdsong, we created the 'Pure Birdhouse’ - an eco, stylish and practical home for birds - given away free with every purchase of the Woodland speaker, to bring nature a little bit closer to home. Launched as a freebie with any purchase of the Woodland speaker, all profits went to the Woodland Trust, too, to ensure birds continue to get the protection they need in woodlands across the UK.
To drive more visitors to the website, and to link in the nation’s misconceptions around which tweet belongs to which bird, the campaign kicked off with a fun, interactive game titled: Pure Chirps - which bird song is it? Encouraging visitors to listen to common bird songs and identify ‘your lark from your grey tit’, with the added incentive of winning Pure Woodland products.
For the cherry on the cake, we partnered with national treasure, naturalist and TV presenter, Chris Packham, to launch the campaign. Who else?! Not only does he know a thing or two about birds, but he’s an absolute legend, too. We had a photoshoot in Chris’ garden to create a suite of picture assets for media and content for his social media channels.
Thanks to our research, we had a strong media angle for the national press and plenty of stats to repurpose for regional and lifestyle titles. What’s more, the stats - and content from Chris - can continue to be used for evergreen pitching for January 2024 onward, and for Pure marketing channels.
The campaign picked up 18 pieces of coverage with a total audience of 336 million in national news titles (both print and online), consumer lifestyle, and regional press - all of which included a photo of Chris Packham and the Woodland Speaker, links back to the interactive game on the Pure website, or a brand mention. Highlights included: The Sun, The Daily Express and The Daily Mirror.
Chris Packham’s posts on Instagram and Facebook got over 2.3% engagement rate and over 9,000 likes respectively. AND, because he loved being part of the campaign so much, he included the Pure Woodland Speaker on his brand new YouTube documentary 8 Out Of 10 Bats, garnering over 10,000 viewers.
Last, but certainly not least, the Pure website stats: over the period of launch date to mid Nov, there had been 8,078 sessions on the Pure interactive game, and engagement rate of 58.27% and 2,726 emails captured - with those numbers continuing to rise as the campaign continued.
