A Platinum Winning Case Study: The Flash Pack
Author: Radha Vyas
A Platinum Winning Case Study from The Travel Marketing Awards 2015:
The Flash Pack with The First Ever Selfie with Jesus for the Best PR Tactical
In the first year of business in a competitive industry, we knew we had to differentiate and come up with something awe-inspiring if we wanted to stand out. It was challenging trying to find our early adopters with a very limited marketing budget.
We wanted to promote our brand message in a creative and unique way to maximise press coverage and put The Flash Pack on the map. Lee Thompson, co-founder and professional photographer knew the power of image and we needed to play to our strengths. We wanted to use powerful visuals to convey the message that we are a travel company pushing boundaries and shaking things up within the group tours industry.
In early 2014, with all eyes on Brazil we came up with the idea to climb the Christ the Redeemer statue and snap the ‘First ever Selfie with Jesus’. The campaign capitalised on two major zeitgeist moments of 2014, The World Cup and the Selfie craze.
The photo perfectly portrays The Flash Pack’s obsession with searching for new and exclusive activities, and our determination to bring others on these journeys.
To ensure we got maximum coverage and interest, we released the image and video footage along with a carefully constructed press release to UK news agencies, two weeks before the World Cup officially kicked off. We deliberately targeted The Dailymail Online and Metro online as we knew the viral potential of content shared by their readers.
The press release included our key brand messages a link back to our website and we directed readers to our website for more exclusive footage.
Within 24 hours the story had gone viral around the world. We calculated well over 100 million impressions within 1 week. We were trending on Facebook, twitter and instagram. We were covered by every newspaper, tv and radio station around the world including The Daily Mail, Metro, BBC, Telegraph, Independent, Huffington Post Sunday Times, Buzzfeed, The Week, Yahoo, BBC Radio 2, Time Magazine, MTV, People, New York Post, Washington Post, RT, Der Spiegle, Telegraf and more. We were also featured heavily on TV and radio, with features and interviews appearing on CNN, NBC, Campbell Live New Zealand, Fox, RTE radio, ABC, Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Kevin Newman Live.
We entered the Travel marketing Awards under ‘Best PR Tactical’ and were overwhelmed that a small startup were the only company in the awards to achieve Platinum Standard! The Flash Pack were suddenly on the map. We were suddenly on the radar of some of the biggest Travel companies in the UK.
The award has given us an enormous amount of credibility with customers, partners and suppliers. We are now able to attract amazing staff that motivated by working for a small but exciting company.
Our cube has pride of place on our self. It’s the first think anyone sees when they enter the office!
Radha Vyas, Co-Founder, The Flash Pack