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 Company: Eulogy!PR, London, England
Company Description: Eulogy! PR was formed in 1997 by CEO Adrian Brady. Eulogy! is made up of 34 talented individuals working across Business 2 Business and consumer accounts such as Royal Mail, ABC, Pearl & Dean, Virgin Radio, Virgin Mobile and Beck’s.
Nomination Category: Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, & Public Relations Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Communications Campaign
Nomination Title: Launch of the Hard Days Night Hotel
1. Tell the story about this nominated communications program (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:
Overview
Hard Days Night Hotel is a four-star boutique hotel in Liverpool featuring
Beatles-themed artwork. The grade II listed hotel has 110 guest rooms, two
penthouse suites, two restaurants, two exclusive bars, two conference rooms and
a wedding suite.
Objectives
In late 2007, Eulogy! was asked by the management team to launch the hotel,
using public relations as the sole marketing activity.
Challenges
Eulogy! was briefed that the hotel must not be portrayed as a tacky, themed
venue. It was imperative that all press activity communicated the key message
that the hotel is a four star boutique residence characterised with Beatles
artwork. This was very difficult to achieve due to the connotations of themed
hotels.
The hotel is not endorsed by any of the four Beatles, therefore Eulogy! were
not able to leverage coverage from celebrity involvement.
Implementation
The launch was originally planned for November 2007. Eulogy! advised the hotel
management to postpone until February, so the launch could fully
capitalise on Liverpool’s tenure as Capital of Culture during 2008.
The PR campaign started in September to create a buzz around the new hotel. The
team worked closely with government agencies such as VisitBritain and Mersey
Partnership to ensure journalists visiting the city as Capital of Culture were
aware of Hard Days Night Hotel as a place to stay or to visit.
Eulogy! put together a media contact programme to forge strong relationships
with key travel, consumer, lifestyle and arts journalists. The team came up
with dozens of creative story angles before and after the launch, including big
feature ideas such as ‘Celebrity suites in hotels around the world’. Reviews
were also placed to raise awareness and maintain momentum.
It was critical to engage Beatles fans around the world, and the team built
relationships with key Beatles bloggers and websites by conducting special
preview tours and keeping them updated regularly.
Key hotel staff, including the general manager, received media training before
opening day to ensure all coverage was positive and all media were handled
appropriately. On the day, the general manager conducted interviews with TV,
radio and print journalists, groups of journalists were given tours of the
hotel and live feed exclusives were given to the BBC.
The campaign achieved over 545 pieces of press coverage with a total print
circulation of more than 700 million. There was also international broadcast
coverage from one French, three Spanish, eight Australian, and 163 American
channels. This included CNN, NBC, ABC News, Sky News and Reuters. In addition,
extensive British broadcast coverage included BBC Breakfast, BBC North West,
BBC Radio 4, Granada and ITV News.
Of this coverage, over 98% was positive and over 80% adhered to the key PR
messages.
Hits to the website www.harddaysnighthotel.com rose from 80,000 per week in the
lead up to the launch to more than 1.4 million in the four days following the
launch.
The day after launch, the hotel took 184 room bookings. The average number of
room bookings per day rose from 40 the week before the launch to more than 130
per day following the launch.
For comparison, its direct competitor, Malmaison Liverpool, had an occupancy
target of 15% in its first month with the backing of a national brand,
international reservation systems and a large marketing department.
2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:
Caterer and Hotelkeeper:
http://www.caterersearch.com/Articles/2008/02/01/318769/beatles-inspired-hard-days-night-hotel-opens-today.html
BBC Online: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/7221658.stm
BBC Online: http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/content/image_galleries/hard_days_night_hotel_gallery.shtml?3
Bild Online (Germany): http://www.bild.de/BILD/lifestyle/reise/2008/01/beatles-hotel/liverpool,geo=3458022.html
CNN (video):
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2008/02/01/black.hard.days.night.hotel.cnn?iref=videosearch
CNN (transcript): http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0802/01/cnr.02.html
Guardian Unlimited:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/gallery/2008/feb/05/liverpool.hotels?picture=332362407
USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/travel/hotels/2008-02-01-beatles-hotel_N.htm
New York Post:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/02052008/entertainment/travel/oh__mersey__217267.htm
Daily Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/hotels/748392/Beatles-hotel--I-loved-it---yeah%2C-yeah%2C-yeah.html
Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/uk/24hour-room-service-hard-days-night-hotel-liverpool-780143.html
Wall Street Journal (video is essential):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120665319668169695.html
ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/BusinessTravel/story?id=4238295&page=1
The Sun: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/travel/article890388.ece
Liverpool Daily Post: http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-life-features/capital-of-culture/2008/04/18/blakes-restaurant-hard-days-night-hotel-north-john-street-liverpool-64375-20782325/
Liverpool Echo (video): http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/videos-pictures/videos/videos-news/2008/02/28/hard-days-night-hotel-100252-20539086/
Liverpool Echo: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-entertainment/the-beatles/the-beatles-news/2008/02/01/fab-new-hotel-is-open-for-business-100252-20424244/
Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,327589,00.html
Square Meal (listing guide):
http://www.squaremeal.co.uk/venues/uk/view/25383/Hard_Days_Night_Hotel
BBC News: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV0SSzLEZOk
3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that carried out this nominated communications program:
Jonny began his PR consultancy career in 1997 working in consumer PR, he joined
Eulogy! in 2006. Jonny is responsible for the planning, implementation and
delivery of all the agency’s consumer-facing PR campaigns, offering consultancy
on a range of activities from media relations to event management. He works on
a number of high profile consumer brands at Eulogy! including Virgin Mobile,
Wyndham Hotel Group, Hard Days Night Hotel, Brown-Forman, Jet, as well as
overseeing the agency’s own PR and marketing.
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