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The importance of good media coverage
28th March 2011. Posted by Sam Dowling. Trackback
As every PR professional knows, securing good media coverage is an important part of the day job. An example of just how much impact coverage can create became evident earlier this month when Chris Moyles broke the £2 million mark for Comic Relief.
For those of you currently living in a cave, Radio 1 breakfast DJ, Chris Moyles and his side-kick ‘Comedy’ Dave pledged to collect money by staying on air for a continuous, world record-breaking 50 hours. 52 hours later they had completed the gruelling challenge and raised a whopping £2.6 million for Comic Relief.
In my opinion a large part of this success was the sustained and prominent PR campaign that accompanied the stint. From the moment Chris and Dave started their broadcast at 6.30am on Wednesday morning, listeners had continual reminders about the challenge, and it was also visible on the Red Button. Live internet streaming, live radio streaming and live television streaming meant that people were continually reminded to donate.
You could question whether it was in fact the media coverage that led to this amazing result or the fact that the stint was already part of a very well-know-charity campaign, backed by a large number of high profile celebrities. Whilst this could have been a factor, you could not fail to notice the difference in money raised between the nine celebrities involved in The BT Red Nose Desert Trek and Chris Moyles’ challenge.
Despite both raising money for Comic Relief and despite the trek involving nine, rather than one, well known celebrities the group raised over £1.2 million less than the radio presenter.
In February, nine celebrities including television favourite, Lorraine Kelly, Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills and ex-Eastender Kara Tointon spent five days trekking across 100km of the Kaisut Desert in eastern Kenya in the blistering heat. When you consider the enormity of the task they undertook and the challenges they faced it’s hard to understand why they to raised less money than two radio DJs who spent 52 hours being surprised by celebrity guests and sitting in their office. In the end I believe it all boils down to the sheer amount of media coverage secured as part of Chris Moyle’s campaign.
That’s not to say that the trekkers didn’t have a weighty amount of PR behind them as well, including a documentary filmed and broadcast in the run up to Red Nose Day and the ability for people to follow their progress online. Many of the participating celebrities also pushed the campaign through columns in national newspapers and live broadcasts from Lorraine Kelly and Scott Mills. All in all, overall promotion was not as intensive and dominant as Chris Moyles’ and the figure may unfortunately have been a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’.
Any amount of live broadcasts completed by the trekkers were matched by Chris Moyles who in addition to transmitting live for 52 hours, also managed to squeeze in live interviews on television shows including BBC One and This Morning. Regardless of which task may have been deemed more challenging for the celebrities, the clear winner of the media coverage money race was Chris Moyles.
Now obviously, this is a particularly extreme campaign and whilst many PRs wish for a budget this big unfortunately we don’t all have access to one. The message however, is still clear; securing good media coverage will help raise the profile of any campaign and if you can throw a bikini-clad celebrity into the mix you’re onto a winner!
