Liam Fontaine shoots and scores with the media thanks to Edinburgh PR agency

THE HELP of a famous Edinburgh face – and beard – has enabled one of Scotland’s favourite charity’s to make a great splash in the media.

Hibs defender Liam Fontaine is renowned for his bushy beard – as well as his playing skills – and took the generous decision to brave the razor to raise funds for the Sick Kids Friends Foundation (SKFF).

Liam set the target of £1,000 but this more than doubled in only two days, going above and beyond everyone’s expectations and reaching a staggering total of £2,100 for the much-loved charity.

The expert public relations team at Holyrood PR stepped in to give the cause a major push in the media – and the results were stellar – generating more than 20 significant items of coverage across national, regional and online publications.

Read The Original Press Release Here

The story was the pick of the press within just 24 hours, with coverage in the Edinburgh Reporter, the Edinburgh Evening News and the Daily Record ensuring Liam’s fundraising efforts reached key demographics.

Our engagement of the local area, and inclusion of the details of Liam’s Just Giving page in the press release, meant his total money raised began to rapidly increase.

But the reach also grabbed Scotland-wide attention, gracing the pages of The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Herald and the Edinburgh Evening News – all of which together have a potential audience of over 360,000 readers

But, as an agency with a “multiple bites of the cherry” mindset and knowing that the story had a powerful message and was a point of interest for the local area, we didn’t write just one press release.

To keep the ball rolling, we drafted a second release after the event, detailing the impressive final total raised by Liam and including a statement from the defender, describing how overwhelmed he was by the event and thanking everyone who had supported him.

This post-event push saw the story picked up by yet more media sources, including target nationals The Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Star and the Herald. Local titles Edinburgh Evening News and the Edinburgh Reporter also ran further follow up features.

In total, the story of Liam’s close shave was picked up by 21 media sources, of which 7 were Scottish national daily papers and 12 were key online Scottish titles. This means that both articles combined reached a total potential audience of well past the ten million mark.

We also went a step further by ensuring the Easter Road favourite’s brush with the clippers was caught on camera – both in photographs and on video

Powerful images are crucial to success, not only in traditional media but also online, so we made sure to get a wide range of photographs which showcased the fundraising activity and appealed to print and online journalists alike.

And with before and after photos aplenty, we tailored the heart-warming story accordingly and took to social media to share it across even more platforms.

To date, our video, featuring an interview with and thank you message from Liam Fontaine, has had 6500 views and 61 shares on Facebook. In addition, news articles relating to his charity event have been shared 524 times across social media, and his Just Giving page has had 396 shares.

In addition, the story has achieved a reach of 314,552 on Twitter, and secured a total of 419,676 impressions.

Could your business or venture use publicity like this to help the cause? Then speak to our public relations experts.

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