Discover how to make a splash without the cash with EN's guide to launching a product on a shoestring

In 2003, after 35 years of deathdefying chocolate deliveries, the Milk Tray Man was axed. Women all over Britain mourned the macho man in black and his heartflutteringly romantic gestures.

So imagine the joy of a bunch of female travel journalists when, in the run up to Valentine’s Day 2006, they received word that a mystery man dressed in farmer’s garb was emerging from Windermere with roses and chocolates and heading to London on a quad bike.

The hunk met with little resistance when he landed at the offices of the nationals to hand over hand-made Cumbrian chocolates with an accompanying calling card saying, “All because the lady loves a farm stay.”

As you’ve probably guessed by now, the mystery man wasn’t despatched by Cadbury. He was on a mission to launch a new cluster of 16 Cumbrian farms as part of a campaign masterminded by Lancashire’s Catapult PR for The North West Farm Tourism Initiative.

The 16 venues in Cumbria’s “Luxury in a Farm” initiative include Lakeland cottages, converted granaries, country guesthouses and an old coach house – all of which diversified into luxury tourism after foot and mouth.

Catapult PR’s role was to boost North West farm holiday visitor numbers by dispelling associations of farm holidays with muddy farmyards and strong country smells, and repositioning them as romantic – sexy even.

The action man’s light-hearted antics yielded some serious results. Coverage in the Independent, the Sun and the Observer saw farm holidays described as “cool”, “exciting”, “upmarket”, “sumptuous” and “fun”, and the Guardian branded Cumbria “the new Paris”, which is obviously taking things too far – wonder how many of them have actually set foot in Workington?

Thanks flooded in from farm operators experiencing booking booms, though. Ann’s Hill Farm at Cockermouth, for example, has had a full order book since the campaign.

This might seem a terribly convoluted way of capturing journalists’ attention – what happened to a good, old-fashioned press release? However, according to Jane Hunt, managing director of Catapult PR, it’s very necessary.

“We would always recommend that a product launch be supported with some form of twist or angle to make the press sit up and take notice. Media are inundated with pieces of paper and emails, so anything novel and attentiongrabbing gives a campaign launch a head start, enhancing the chances of coverage and third party endorsement tremendously.”

A stunt that usually grabs media attention is a world record attempt – whether baking the world’s biggest pavlova or conducting the largest coconut orchestra.

It was a tactic deployed by Manchester agency MC2 when it was enlisted to develop a pro bono PR campaign for Versus Cancer, a Manchester charity concert.

With former The Smiths bass player Andy Rourke the man behind the gig, attracting acts to perform wasn’t a problem and music legends like Ian Brown, Noel Gallagher, New Order and The Charlatans were soon signed up. The challenge was making sure all 15,000 seats at the MEN Arena were taken.

MC2 persuaded the Manchester Evening News and Xfm to come on board as media partners, and staged an event to set the record for the world’s largest group busk. Some 250 people, from talented acoustic guitarists to grown men with triangles, took to the streets of Manchester. It culminated with a group rendition of Wonderwall, led by
original Oasis guitarist Bonehead. The ensuing cacophony might have offended a few ears but it achieved what it set out to – Versus Cancer was a sell-out.

If you’re thinking world record attempts don’t get much weirder, you are mistaken. The bizarre spectacle of 250 triangle and guitar wielding buskers was matched in the weirdness stakes by Xfm’s Bezathon – a world record attempt fronted byHappy Mondays maracas man Bez in which around 500 maraca-shaking Mancunians danced like drug-addled loons in Manchester’s Albert Square.

Manchester’s Crush Communications was the brains behind the Bezathon, which was the climax of a campaign to launch radio station Xfm in March 2006.

The agency conceived a 24-hour programme of activity for Manchester’s “24 hour party people”, which, besides the Bezathon, included an afternoon party in Harvey Nichols and the Ordinary Boys playing the Mint Lounge.

If you don’t think you’ve got what it takes to be a record breaker, then in today’s celebrity-obsessed society nothing creates more column inches than the sighting of a famous face. It might seem unrealistic that you’ll be able to convince even a “Dlister” to put in an appearance at your launch without demanding a six figure sum but, as Mere PR’s experience shows, if you don’t try, you don’t get.

The Cheshire agency was tasked with devising a stunt to promote bmi’s Las Vegas route. “We decided to approach the ultimate showgirl, Katie Price [aka Jordan], and ask her to jump out of a cake at Manchester Airport,” says agency director Victoria Moore. “Katie agreed, in return for a number of business class flights to Las Vegas as she was shooting her calendar there.”

No fee was charged by Katie or her agent and coverage was secured in regional and national newspapers, regional television, the travel trade media and celebrity magazines.

The promise of the chance to rub shoulders with stars is usually incentive enough to get bums on seats at a launch event. It’s certainly a formula that worked for retail chain Labsport when it opened the first of a nationwide chain of stores in Chester in September.

The Lab is billed as a platform for leading and emerging names in the clothing world to showcase their experimental designs before they are made available to the mass market. Marketing agency Real Affinity picked up the brief for launching the concept to style-conscious Cestrians.

“Working to an extremely tight budget, we were asked to create a launch that made customers aware of the new store and drove footfall and sales,” says Ashley Metcalfe, head of marketing with Real Affinity.

Real Affinity managed a ticketonly launch which offered guests an exclusive preview of the latest experimental designs, not usually available on the high street, from brands like Adidas, Puma, Merrell and Oakley.

Real Affinity persuaded the brands to provide freebies for guest goody bags and invite their own brand ambassadors to attend. Former Olympian and UK 400 metre record holder Iwan Thomas together with three Warrington Wolves showed up at the champagne reception.

“Bollocks for breakfast” was the strapline of a campaign conceived by Cheshire agency Pazang to promote Eversfield Organic’s produce.

Following recipes developed by celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall, sheep’s testicles were transformed into delectable delicacies and sent to the press and radio and TV presenters to try.

Pazang gained coverage in consumer titles and newspapers including The Daily Star and The Birmingham Post. Presenters on Galaxy FM tasted Eversfield’s produce on air and they even ended up in the Big Brother house. Of course there are products that don’t need cunning stunts to generate coverage – their originality and/or novelty value makes them inherently newsworthy.

The micro-scooter – in its heyday – was one. Healthy waters from Works With Water, the brainchild of entrepreneur Jules Birch, was another.

Clitheroe-based Works With Water is the only UK company to deliver clinically-proven health benefits in bottled spring water.

Birch approached Freshfield PR in March to launch a new blood pressure-lowering drink called 120/80.

“In launching 120/80, I knew I had one shot and one shot only,” says Birch. “With ‘vitamin-enriched’ waters coming to market every day, 120/80 had to stand out from the crowd and demonstrate it delivered direct health benefits to the consumer.”

Freshfield negotiated an exclusive with the health pages of the Daily Express. Its coverage led to consumers contacting the paper in droves, eager to get hold of the product.

“I had to send the health editor of the Express some flowers as a thankyou for handling all the enquiries,” recalls Birch.

In addition, Birch personally received over 300 emails from consumers desperate to get their hands on 120/80.

She says following the launch return on sales doubled week-on-week. “This took all of us by surprise, including our retail partners, and caused a problem in that to facilitate increased production we had to move to another, faster line which necessitated a change of bottle. This supply interruption caused consumer demand to soar even further as media coverage continued.”

To further exacerbate the situation, the Express had mistakenly printed that Boots (instead of Booths) was stocking the water, prompting consumer enquiries at Boots stores nationwide.

However, some PRs have learned the hard way that you can get too cunning with your stunts. A publicity trick that Brazen pulled for Stockport confectioner Cheshire Chocolates backfired when it emerged that all wasn’t as it seemed.

A story in the weekly free paper, the Manchester Metro News, reported that “lovestruck” Matt Moxham had spent £700 arranging for 20 gallons of melted chocolate to be pumped into the bath for his chocaholic girlfriend Leah Watson.

However, when checking the story for publication in the daily paper, the MEN’s diary editor recognised the couple as not being a couple – Leah was in fact a Brazen exec and Matt the partner of a Brazen director.

Maybe next time they should stick to a good, oldfashioned press release.

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