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Chapter Communications and the UK Weddings Taskforce

Business8-Nov-2021

We spoke to Neil Kent, Managing Director of Chapter Communications: PR and Brand Storytelling Agency, to find out more about their work with the UK Weddings Taskforce and how they achieved such a successful campaign.

Tell us about Chapter Communications

Chapter is a PR and brand storytelling agency for purpose-driven and pioneering businesses. We work with brands that have purpose at the heart of their agenda (i.e. they value purpose as much or more than profit) and/or are truly pioneering in their approach to doing business. We represent brands from the weddings, events, hospitality, and property sectors.

Why did you get involved in the UK Weddings Taskforce?

Since launching in 2010 (we were known as Something Blue PR back then) we have had a deep affinity with the wedding sector. We have represented hundreds of wedding suppliers from designers, retailers, venues, planners, caterers, and everything in between. We’ve since expanded our offering but have kept close to the industry and still have many wedding suppliers on our books. The COVID-19 pandemic was catastrophic for so many of our clients, colleagues and industry friends and we wanted to do our bit to help. Early in 2020 we offered free consultancy, ran workshops, created free content packs for impacted suppliers and spent many a day helping suppliers through the choppy and seemingly unending waters. I have known Zoe Jobson (Taskforce Communications Chair) for many years and when I saw she was involved in the UK Weddings Taskforce, I was keen to offer Chapter’s support.

What were your aims as the PR manager for the Taskforce?

The UK Weddings Taskforce had an incredibly important story to tell and was tasked with being the voice of 60,000 businesses and 400,000 workers, yet the media were not taking it seriously. Media requests had been falling on deaf ears and so the Taskforce needed help building out a strategy and achieving cut-through press coverage at a time when every industry was fighting for column inches and share of voice.

What were some of the key achievements from the campaign?

The PR campaign achieved the following:

136 online news articles with titles as diverse as BBC, The Telegraph, The Times, The Mirror, Financial Times and The Guardian to the Lancashire Post, Farmer’s Guardian and New Delhi TV
50+ broadcast interviews on all major terrestrial and satellite broadcasters across TV, digital radio, and podcast (BBC, SKY, ITV, LBC, Talk Radio, Times Radio…the list goes on)
3.2 billion cumulative online readership
11.8 million estimated coverage views

You can read our coverage book here for more information.

How did you achieve this coverage?

I used my network of high-profile press contacts, starting first at national print and broadcast level, and then filtering down to specific sectors and regional platforms. I helped to reshape the Taskforce’s messaging into press releases and content that would capture the interest of newsrooms. Once we had their attention, we constantly fed them with updated messaging, statistics, case studies and angles. It was very much a team effort, and I worked incredibly closely with a number of Taskforce colleagues, particularly Zoe Jobson, Chris Naylor, Alison Hargreaves and Sarah Haywood. The latter being an exceptional Spokesperson, delivering unwavering clarity of message regardless of the time of day or day of the week. There were several interviews in the middle of the night that Sarah handled with aplomb, and for that I am incredibly grateful. I have lost count of the number of Zooms, Slack and WhatsApp messages between the entire Taskforce Communications team but now as I look back on what was a very intensive period of work, when we were all incidentally working to save our own businesses simultaneously, I’m filled with pride and happiness that I met and worked with such brilliant people.