Everyone wants to experience something first-hand before they endorse it. You wouldn’t recommend a new podcast or TV show if you have no idea if it’s any good, right? Media events can work the same way. If you’re asking journalists to promote a product or event, offering the chance to experience it for themselves first means you’re far more likely to get a review, and one that’s honest and emotive.
Recently, we used this theory for a Mother’s Day event that we hosted for our client, Silent Pool Gin. Silent Pool Gin is the UK’s best-selling super premium gin, operating from a sustainable distillery.
As part of the PR campaign, we were tasked with creating an event for consumers to be exposed to the product. Because we weren’t launching a new brand, to keep the client relevant and find a way to promote it, we came up with the idea to host a Mother’s Day event (knowing how much our mums love G&T’s!) and offer consumers something to experience and share with their mums. So, we teamed up with Sydney’s premier painting class, Pinot and Picasso, to create the ultimate Mother’s Day experience of painting while enjoying gin cocktails (ideal, right?).
To promote the event in time for Mother’s Day, we hosted a ‘mock’ event for media, where we recreated the exact same class for journalists to enjoy with their mothers before the real deal. As a result of the event, we were able to secure excellent coverage for the brand in time for Mother’s Day, from some of Australia’s leading outlets such as Time Out and Sitchu.
If you’re considering hosting an event/ preview, here’s some things to consider:
Why should you host an event?
There are several great reasons to host client events, such as launching a new product, promoting a partnership or creating a promotion around a significant day of the year (eg. Mother’s Day). However, if you don’t have a new product or feature to launch, or nothing majorly new to endorse, an event can be a great way to get people talking about the client.
We had already launched Silent Pool Gin into the Australian market the previous year, so we needed to find new ways to keep the brand relevant and interest consumers, without having anything to sell that hadn’t already been available. So, hosting a tasting event that we could tie into a major day of the year was a great way to promote the client and reach the target demographic.
Why should you create a preview?
As previously mentioned, everyone wants to experience something for themselves before recommending it. This is a popular method used when trying to promote something. Just like film critics are invited to review movies in an advanced screening, inviting the journalists that you want to review or recommend something to preview it first is a great way to build hype for what you’re promoting.
Offering journalists the chance to enjoy the experience and product for themselves before promoting it to consumers helped us to achieve more media coverage, and genuine reviews endorsing Silent Pool.
Why should you partner with other businesses?
When you’re promoting a new product that stands on its own, you don’t usually need to partner with other businesses. However, when you aren’t launching anything new or offering consumers something that they haven’t previously had access to, partnering with another business can be a good way to get people talking and offer consumers something that feels rare or limited, which ultimately garners more interest.
Another huge benefit of partnering with any well established business, is the access that you have to their followers, consumers and databases. Pinot and Picasso, as the premier painting class in Sydney, has access to a huge audience and has made a great name for itself as an enterprise. By partnering with such an esteemed business, Silent Pool Gin was able to tie its own brand to the business, and leverage off the audience and database of P&P to appeal to more consumers.
To find out more about what you need to know before hosting a Public Relations event, check out the rest of our event blog hub to learn more. Or, if you’re interested in hosting a PR event or creating a brand partnership, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Agent Emma
