Watershed PR targeted online news sites with their smelly cheese campaign for the Royal Bath & West Show. They managed to secure a considerable amount of published online content, so there is plenty of access to the campaign available online for those interested in the client, which will be archived for the long term and appear in search engines.
However, in terms of updating their client website, using sites such as Twitter and Facebook, blogging, youtube, etc, they did nothing. For a campaign that managed to secure more than 12 stories in national newspapers, feature on BBC and ITV News and get a feature in a national magazine, is it possible that they could have utilised the online space available to further promote a campaign that is evidently interesting and newsworthy?
An important point to keep in mind is that the target audience for this campaign is national. The Royal Bath & West Show is one of the largest agricultural events in the UK and attracts visitors from even further afield.
In terms of time, they only had 3 months. In terms of budget, they only had 5k. Social networking is free and instant. Do you think it would have been worthwhile for Watershed to use social media or would it have just been like an accessory to the campaign that wouldn’t have added any real value?
