The ‘big freeze’ that struck the UK earlier this month undoubtedly had a negative impact upon business. With people unable to get to work and vital deliveries delayed, the cumulative loss to UK enterprise is predicted to top £1 billion.
Nevertheless, some businesses ploughed on through the terrible conditions and got good PR out of the bad weather.
Here, in no particular order, is a selection of examples:
1. Positive Computing, based in Berkshire, were relatively unaffected by the bad weather, with managing director Julian Lewis able to run the business from home whilst keeping in touch with his home working staff. In fact, according to the resulting press report, the bad weather saw demand for the company’s expertise – setting up remote workers – soar.
2. Internet telephony service Skype made the press repeatedly, being cited as a vital tool for many business looking to avoid having to cancel meetings or lose contact with clients.
3. The workers at Cleveland Potash salt mine sacrificed large parts of their Christmas break to ensure that the incredible demand for salt was met. Indeed, some even worked on Christmas Day, winning some positive press.
4. Despite schools and nurseries being closed across the UK, some remained open. Indeed, Daisy Chains Day Nursery in Flint, Wales even went as far as to accommodate extra children from other nurseries that had been closed, winning favour with the media and, no doubt, parents.
5. Outsourcery, a communications and hosted IT company, garnered some positive publicity when they reported a 20% increase in enquiries over the cold snap as small and medium sized businesses looked to for communications solutions to the problems caused by the snow.
The lesson here: good PR practice isn’t just about making announcements when you have a new product or service, it’s about keeping an eagle eye on current events (local and national) and being ready to make a comment or provide additional information wherever relevant.
Did you manage to get positive press for yourself or a client during the freeze? Please add your stories in the comments section below.
(Hat tip to Marketing Donut for giving me the idea for this post)
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Emily,
You are spot on. The snow gave us the chance to write something that was interesting and non geeky which is not a common thing for an IT Support Company. I was impressed with PR & Twitter Guru Nigel Morgan who contacted me via Twitter to say I had a story that people would want to read. So good PR practice is to keep an eye on events and great PR is pointing that out to people who may have missed it! Also great use of Twitter by Nigel to get some business!
Thank you for mentioning us in your blog, now that I am following you on Twitter I look forward to getting to know you better.
Regards
Julian Lewis – MD
Positive Computing – Reading – London – Bristol
http://www.positivecomputing.com
As a local authority, many eyes were focussed on our response to what was the worst cold weather spell we had experienced for 30-40 years.
In particular, how were we coping in continuing to provide important services as well as main transport routes open.
Our local media were given comprehensive statements about the situation and our response. As well as elected members reassuring the community, technical officers were made available for interview and key facts and figures drawn up and issued.
Our website was updated with detail information two or three times a day with information on weather forecasts, activities undertaken that day as well as routes that were being prioritised.
This lasted for approximately four weeks including updates on both Christmas and New Year’s Day.
While many local authorities were panned by their local media, we received some great coverage in each of the four editions during the cold weather.
Statements were carried in full, editorials were in moderate praise of our response given the circumstances. Local radio carried interviews with our Roads manager.
The statements were made to reflect current mood relative to what was the media perception of the most current ‘weather issue’ was at the time – eg icy pavements, care of vulnerable people, supplies of grit and how we prioritised our gritting programme.
We tweeted on several occasions reminding people to check for the regular updates.
Our website saw regular traffic looking for our updates and there were great human interest angles to be had (see links below). We left off other news so that our home page would show the succession of updates without interruption.
Overall with a little bit of imagination and planning, we got through the emergency as well as the media frenzy for all things weather!
http://bit.ly/7gQosN and http://bit.ly/572AVS (shortened)
I have to share this with you because during the week of the snow I became Twitter’s favourite weatherman whilst ‘working from home’. I heard about a Twitter generated realtime snow map app. and decided to create my own take on it which quite unintentionally became a cult hit. Very much powered by it’s topicality that day.
My ‘real’ uksnow weather map has been viewed a massive 10,000 times on Twitpic and was re-tweeted 300 times on Twitter, becoming a top 1000 Meme on the day it was posted.
If you’ve not seen it here it is http://twitpic.com/wriw1
Of course, my boss being a PR genius turned it in to a piece of self promotion for IAS.
And we all had fun snowballing, making snowmen and sledging, well I did anyway.