Challenge
Known as the catering experts of choice to partner with the most exclusive venues, Sodexo was undertaking an important rebranding exercise.
The new look for its premium service offering, Prestige Venue & Events, was intended to emphasise the quality of its 17 top class venues across Scotland, including the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh and Hampden Park.
It was also coinciding with the launch of a new “enquiry hub” based in South Queensferry, a centralise service for all 50 high end UK venues.
The launch of the new call centre was seen as vital in putting the revived PV&E offering in front of the most important business constituents – professional booking agents.
To jointly launch the hub and the updated brand, Sodexo planned a major event in Edinburgh – and called on our food and drink PR experts to make it a success.
Objective
The strategy was to position Sodexo Prestige at front of mind for vital business customers (both event bookers and venue managers) across a two-month period, by targeting the most influential titles in the Meetings, Incentive, Conference and Events (MICE) media.
While aim was to use both the rebrand of PV&E and the launch of the call centre to drive coverage, a more granular approach was needed to sustain the media push across two months.
Working with Sodexo, we agreed to a set of demanding objectives, despite the tight time scales, to: Show at least a 40% increase in high-quality, pre-qualified business leads as a result of the PR campaign.
Help the service to win at least £500,000 of new business in the first six months of operation.
Ensure maximum attendance at the launch event.
Achieve eight items of pre-launch coverage, and five items of post event coverage, with emphasis on business and MICE titles
Ensure at least one Key Message (KM) in 70% of coverage.
WHAT WE DID
While targeting the most influential MICE media titles, our ‘calendar’ of stories extended coverage to mainstream business titles.
We broke the rollout into segments:
PHASE ONE – Pre-launch announcement of Sodexo’s major industry event in Edinburgh
PHASE TWO – Announcing the new call centre, emphasising the importance of Scotland to Sodexo
PHASE THREE –Revealing the previous two years of impressive growth (+£2.7million revenues) in Scotland.
PHASE FOUR – On the week of the launch party, announcing the guest speakers and influential figures from the events and hospitality sector confirmed to attend.
PHASE FIVE – During the launch we arranged for Scotland on Sunday’s business editor to interview Sodexo Prestige’s managing director.
PHASE SIX – A post launch media release suggesting that business and corporate events were making a comeback after years in the recessionary doldrums.
During the launch we encouraged extensive social media sharing of the hashtag #prestigelivelaunch. And we arranged a photographer and videographer to capture the event
