Case Study: The World’s First Mankini Emoji

When hen and stag party brand Red7 Leisure wanted to enhance its market share, Red Hot Penny came up with a PR and SEO campaign to leverage the popularity of emojis by creating “The World’s First Mankini Emoji”, as well as blow-up doll and beer goggle symbols…

Campaign: The World’s First Mankini Emoji
Client: Red7 Leisure
PR Team: Red Hot Penny
Timing: November 2015 – January 2016

Overview

Red7 is a leading hen and stag company, established over 30 years ago. Over the last 30 years the brand has arranged more than 30,000 hen and stag parties in locations all over the world. It offers a choice of over 50 destinations, both UK and overseas, and more than 100 day and night time activities. It carries in the region of 35,000 passengers every year.

Following a competitive pitch, Red7 appointed Red Hot Penny to increase its market share through a dynamic and creative digital strategy. The brand required an integrated mix of PR and SEO, so Red Hot Penny created a content campaign that would raise brand awareness and drive traffic to Red7’s newly launched site.

Objectives

Position Red7 as a forward-thinking company that is in touch with the digital era
Communicate that Red7 is a fun and energetic company
Gain quality links on “high authority” sites which would push users through to browse Red7’s holiday destinations and packages
Raise awareness of the Red7 brand and promote its new website launch
Increase booking enquires coming through referrals

Strategy

Creative content campaigns allow brands to produce content they own, which can be distributed through various channels resulting in press coverage.

For Red7, Red Hot Penny produced a creative content campaign boldly named ‘The World’s First Mankini Emoji’. The aim of the integrated strategy was to leverage the popularity of emojis and position Red7 as a forward-thinking company that is in touch with the digital era. Because Red7 is in the travel and entertainment industry, it was important to show the brand’s fun and energetic personality.

Emojis had been all over the news in recent months and spiked in popularity in 2015, particularly in the last few months before Red Hot Penny launched the campaign in January 2016. The introduction of new emoji sets by brands and individuals had gained significant traction in the press and in organic search. Metro, BBC and Buzzfeed are a few titles that had regularly been posting about emojis.

The creative content campaign was to go through various stages before distribution and promotion. These stages include:

Research and Development
Idea Validation (pre-outreach)
Creation of a robust and agile outreach strategy for launch
Creation of supporting content for our outreach strategy
Design and build
Testing
Launch and promotion

After researching the most popular and iconic objects associated with hen and stag events, the campaign kicked off. Red Hot Penny created eight unique emojis that were hen and stag themed and placed them on a microsite. The emojis included hen and stag warning signs, ‘L’ plates, a blow-up doll, beer goggles, hen sash, a bride and the most popular: The Mankini.

The microsite hosting Red7’s emojis and information about the campaign was launched on the same date as when the outreach began. The emojis were distributed via social media and PR, gaining coverage on influential sites and driving traffic to Red7’s site.

Results

Brand awareness was raised and the number of enquiries to Red7’s website were increased. The business also received an influx of calls following the campaign as it got the Red7 name out there and sold its “fun attitude” to its target market.

PR coverage and stats following outreach:

Daily Mail, Digital Spy, PR Week, Independent.ie, and many more, featured the emojis on their sites and, most importantly, linked to the new Red7 site.
Coverage in UK, Ireland and USA.
Combined press coverage circulation of more than 260 million in total following outreach.

SEO improvements overview from campaign:

1,000 “hits” on the first day of microsite going live.
Total of 6,850 sessions throughout two week campaign.
Targeted key audience perfectly with 45% of visitors being between the ages of 25 to 34.

Got a cracking campaign – with impressive results – that you’d like to showcase? If so, please email richard.odonnell@gorkana.com.