Our Head of Media, Carl Stroud, reveals how PR and comms professionals can navigate ‘silly season’
Stretching from late July to early September is a period that fills the nation’s newsrooms with dread.
It is of course Silly Season.
It is a time when the usual cut and thrust of Westminster politics is absent from the news agenda as MPs pack their bags for their summer holidays.
Our captains of industry follow suit.
The result is no big announcements from government or business for weeks and weeks on end.
This can make it a real struggle to put together news bulletins, fill newspaper pages and keep websites fresh and engaging.
That is only magnified by our current post-pandemic era of smaller and smaller newsroom teams facing unrelenting pressures to drive engagement all year round.
Understanding these nuances presents agencies with a golden opportunity to drive fame for their clients.
Smoking Gun’s award-winning team features acclaimed ex national reporters and editors, offering unrivalled insight into how newsrooms operate – particularly during Silly Season.
It means we provide multi-channel, fame-building storytelling, irresistible news-making and unrivalled activations that drive earned media coverage that is picked up by newsdesks nationwide.
And this Silly Season we’ve harnessed our extensive expertise to deliver stand-out activity for household names including Philips, Eurocamp and Alton Towers.
Across a diverse range of disciplines from disruptive social first campaigns, to data-driven newsmaking, all this activity has been united by a single factor – driving unprecedented talkability for our clients.
We began our Silly Season activity by leveraging the nation’s obsession with airfryers for our client Philips.
Springing from the insight that our social media feeds are getting clogged up with endless airfryer content – we established the first ever No Airfry-Day at the start of Silly Season on Friday July 19th.
We promised to give the nation a break by leading a 24-hour amnesty on online Airfryer content.
We drove engagement with this disruptive concept through rib-tickling influence and meme content – as well national media – driving reach of over 600,000 and 90,000 engagements.
Eurocamp challenged us to drive fame for their new accommodation options for larger groups.
Our campaign positioned Eurocamp as trendsetter in travel and the go-to family holiday provider that truly understands and delivers what holidaymakers want today – bringing this idea to life by demonstrating how friends and families are forming ‘Holiday Squads’.
We drove authority with travel media with data from over 4,000 Eurocamp holidaymakers – demonstrating Eurocamp’s deep understanding of the changing landscape of family holidays – reaching an audience of 85million – generating 83 backlinks along the way – with stand-out print coverage across a host of nationals.
Approaching the key school holiday period, Alton Towers wanted to drive bookings from thrill-seekers following the transformation of its iconic Nemesis rollercoaster – which was back with a vengeance this season as Nemesis Reborn.
We swept the board with blanket coverage by crafting an irresistible story-telling approach rooted in real-life.
It saw us bring to life the multi-generational appeal of Alton Towers by appointing 72-year-old Jackie Smith as the park’s first ever Chief Thrillseeker.
A true trailblazer, Jackie became the first female parachute regiment Red Devil in 1971 at the age of just 19.
A life of adventure followed that saw her become one of Britain’s most accomplished skydivers.
We revealed this to the nation with a stand-out exclusive on BBC’s The One Show before picking up extensive print and online coverage – demolishing KPIs by over 500% and reaching over 300 million people.
Silly Season may be no laughing matter for the nation’s newsrooms – but it’s raised plenty of smiles for our satisfied clients this summer.
