The challenge
Leading car park operator CitiPark are very hot on green initiatives and are always looking at sustainability and new ways to protect the environment, while also giving back to the community and their customers. They have already introduced a range of green initiatives, as well as investing in sustainable technologies to conserve energy, lower pollution and reduce waste.
They came up with a unique, quirky and yet practical way for their customers to do their bit for the environment and save money on their parking at the same time.
During the month of October 2018, they offered customers of their flagship car park at the Merrion Centre in Leeds the opportunity to pay for their parking sessions by bringing in empty plastic bottles! All plastic bottles of 500ml and over were collected on arrival for their customers’ parking session and each plastic bottle collected equated to a 20p discount off that session.
All of the bottles collected were sent to be recycled into usable items such as shirts, toys and even chairs! This campaign showed CitiPark to be a pioneering brand, caring for the environment and allowed customers to save money while simultaneously helping the environment,
Wavelength PR was tasked with promoting the initiative and securing widespread media coverage across local, national and international online, print and broadcast media.
The results
When we first started working on this campaign, we weren’t sure how it would be received by the media or the public. Would they think it too quirky or just a novelty? We couldn’t have been more wrong. Our campaign caught the media and public attention at exactly the right time when the UK (and indeed the world) had just started to become aware of the single use plastic scandal, after seeing Sir David Attenborough raise awareness of this vital issue in his programme ‘Blue Planet 2’.
We prepared a press release containing all the key information and sent it out to all of the local Yorkshire media, as well as the national press, including environment, green and business media and news agencies such as Press Association and Reuters.
Within hours of receiving the release, it started to appear online. The first publications to cover it were the Yorkshire Evening Post and Business Green.
The more websites that covered the story, the more interest grew until it began to snowball and our phones were ringing off the hook!
The daily papers saw the online coverage and ran articles in print and online and then the BBC and local TV stations got involved and we arranged for them to come and film pieces at the Merrion Centre, interviewing staff who were collecting the bottles, speaking to the MD of CitiPark on the reasons behind the initiative and asking customers themselves what they thought of it and why they had got behind it.
Radio stations ran items live and on their websites and even Angela Rippon and Gloria Hunniford, presenting ‘Rip-off Britain’ on the BBC, commended the initiative live on TV! International media caught on and ran articles in India and the US.
In total, we achieved 50+ pieces of coverage, with in excess of 332,401,377 consumers and businesses reached. 85% of coverage included a CitiPark quote and 41% of coverage contained a CitiPark image, which opened CitiPark up to a whole new level of awareness amongst the local, national and international media and put them on the map!