Food and drink: Pimm's kicks off British Summer Time

Campaign: British Summer Time for Pimm's
Client: Pimm's
PR team: Grayling
Timescale: March 2012
Budget: £83,000

 

Objectives

• To make Pimm's synonymous with the start of British Summer Time (BST) and reinforce it as the summer drink of choice

• To get ABC1 25- to 45-year-old Pimm's fans to buy the drink earlier in the season

• To deliver national and regional coverage.

Strategy and plan

Grayling wanted to launch a campaign at the start of BST. It commissioned a survey by OnePoll that revealed Britons spend three months of their lives talking about the weather. It signed up British comedienne Mel Giedroyc as a spokeswoman and erected the world's biggest deckchair on Bournemouth beach. Grayling commissioned a video capturing the 'making of' and the public's reaction to the deckchair, which was uploaded to the Pimm's YouTube channel.

Measurement and evaluation

A total of 127 pieces of coverage were generated, including BBC Breakfast, Huffington Post and The Times. Total mentions of Pimm's online across one weekend were 7,793, compared with 1,213 for the previous weekend.

Results

Research by Nielsen showed there was a 63 per cent increase in sales of Pimm's compared with the same four weeks in 2011.