POWERDAY POWERING THE NHS
- Total campaign reach of 176 million
- More than 40 pieces of coverage generated in the first week of the campaign
- Widespread national and broadcast coverage including The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, Evening Standard, BBC One Show, Sky Sports News, BBC London TV and Radio and more…
Amid a global pandemic, brand trust is now more important than just providing a great service or product, delivering on a company’s promises, or providing exceptional customer service. Businesses are expected to use their position and power to prove their commitment to helping others, but how can brands deliver this in an authentic way?
In March 2020, with London at the epicentre of the UK’s coronavirus outbreak, Powerday was desperate to do something to help NHS and frontline workers heroically working around the clock yet struggling to purchase food from supermarkets. Inspired by the Corona Care Challenge, Powerday partnered with London Irish Rugby Club to create the ‘Powering the NHS’ initiative to support the health and wellbeing of NHS and frontline workers during COVID19.
To raise awareness and drive support for the new initiative, Powerday engaged with Storm who were appointed to create a strategic media relations campaign. The team were quick to mobilise, setting up a dedicated Instagram account within 24 hours and liaising with both Powerday and London Irish to leverage their own channels to further raise awareness, including their websites, social media and newsletters.
With London Irish confirmed to use their training ground kitchen to create more than 400 meals a day, and both club players and staff confirmed to assist with COVID-compliant food preparation and deliveries, a media outreach campaign began in earnest. A press release was issued at the beginning of the campaign, raising awareness of the campaign with reference to Powerday and London Irish’s role in the campaign. By the end of the first week, we had generated more than 40 pieces of media coverage and delivered 3,060 meals to 11 hospitals and hospices.
Simultaneously, weekly updates were published to the London Irish website, while Storm worked with Powerday to publish interviews with club staff and its employees on its website and social media channels. By raising awareness of the hard work undertaken by Powerday and London Irish to give back to front line medical workers, a number of additional donations were made by Powerday clients. Longstanding Powerday customer Barratt London donated 10,000 towards buying produce and covering the cost of the operations, while addition donations were received from Novitas Partners, Kylemore, Eamon Lynam and the British and Irish Trading Alliance.
And, to celebrate the 50,000th meal being delivered, the campaign saw the involvement of the HRH Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex and his wife Sophie, Countess of Wessex agreeing to visit the Hazelwood training ground to see the teams at work making meals and delivering them to a local hospital.
Social media proved to be a key tactic for raising awareness of the ongoing work achieved by the initiative, with the dedicated Instagram account growing organically to 716 followers by the end of the two-month campaign, with more than 1,000 views of our ‘Powering the NHS’ IGTV post. In addition, the page achieved a consistently high engagement rate at 9.45% and like rate at 9.19% with an average 6.6% engagement rate per post.
The campaign generated 18 pieces of broadcast media coverage, including BBC’s One Show, Sky Sports News, BBC London TV and Radio, Talk Sport DriveTime and LBC’s Iain Dale Sunday broadcast. A further seven tier one regional and national print articles were published during the campaign including Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror, The Guardian, Evening Standard, Irish World and Irish Post. Widespread trade coverage was also achieved with coverage appearing in tier one titles such as Materials Recycling World, Let’s Recycle, Circular Online and Construction UK.
In total, the campaign delivered 51,000 meals to 19 different hospitals and organisations over two months before operations were halted when London Irish returned to the pitch, and the kitchen returned to its duties feeding the players. The overwhelming success of the campaign was recognised by all involved, with messages of thanks pouring in over social media from staff appreciating a healthy hot meal during or after a long shift.
