PR & Reputation Management Company

Piccolo

objectives

In 2020, organic baby food brand Piccolo, well loved for its Mediterranean-inspired cooking sauces, pouches and snacks, was about to launch into a whole new product area of formula milk. This was unchartered territory and Piccolo needed a PR partner who is experienced in mother & baby PR campaigns to propel the new range into the national press and support exclusive retailer listings with Boots, Sainsbury’s and Ocado.

strategy

In such a highly regulated industry, Smoking Gun PR approach to mother & baby PR campaigns was to quickly get to grips with the latest guidance, liaising with key stakeholders to ensure comms materials and messages were compliant.

We interviewed Piccolo’s founder, Cat Gazzoli, about why she had chosen to launch into formula milk, and discovered a compelling personal story.

Cat was pregnant with her second child, and having exclusively breastfed her daughter Juliet, she knew things might be different second time around – juggling family life with running the UK’s fastest growing baby food brand. She wanted to create an organic formula milk that she felt 100% confident in.

Cat’s personal story and determination to give parents choices became the centre of the media approach.

execution

Smoking Gun’s approach to mother & baby PR campaigns focussed on going beyond product placement, securing features that would enable Cat to tell the story not just of the formula but the wider business – reaching stakeholders, buyers and investors, but ultimately, real parents.

The team identified the right media titles and leveraged relationships with national journalists. We heroed the full credentials of the formula range, including its recyclable packaging.

We pitched interviews with Cat and put stand out images front and centre of our approaches, including shots of Cat with her pregnancy bump alongside a beaming daughter, Juliet.

We made it clear that Cat had an opinion and was passionate about her reasons for launching the new product. We tailored our pitches to target different media types, from news to business.

results

1

Our approach to mother & baby PR campaigns saw a series of high impact media placements such as Sky News, daily and Sunday nationals and a double page spread in Woman & Home all featured lengthy interviews with Cat. We secured product profiles in the key parenting press too, and generated backlinks from high domain authority websites to bolster search rankings.

2

Coverage included brand images and key messages about the formula product, as well as the businesses wider growth credentials and charitable work. Organic traffic to the Piccolo website increased 65% in the campaign period with many new users introduced to the site.

3

The campaign delivered against the odds amid the global outbreak of Coronavirus. We even pivoted our strategy to support a D2C launch through national media coverage, leading to strong sales.

results

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