The Brief
We were tasked with driving ticket sales for The Art of Banksy’s 3-month stint at Media City by launching and creating noise around the event via high-calibre coverage secured across national, regional, broadcast, and arts media while competing with a saturated news agenda in the run-up to Christmas.
Mid-campaign, the social team were brought on to rejuvenate and improve social performance by enhancing and sustaining Art of Banksy’s presence on social media through engaging content that would grow the channels while collaborating with the PR team to utilise their exciting campaigns.
Our Response
Carousel operated a hard working press office that aimed to create a tangible buzz around The Art of Banksy coming to the region.
To get the exhibition in the mouths of regional and national media houses, we utilised our black book of arts, events and what’s on media contacts by issuing a release that announced The Art of Banksy was coming to Salford. We allocated available budget to regional media partnerships that we negotiated in house with The Manc and Manchester’s Finest, in order to ensure high reaching bespoke regional content that would cut through an unprecedented saturated news agenda.
To maintain momentum between the media announcement and launch event, we targeted arts and culture media with a focus on landing national and top tier regional coverage, employing a multi-channel comms approach via our media partners.
In the week prior to the launch we wanted to ensure that as many people as possible in Greater Manchester knew that The Art of Banksy was in town. We did this by actioning a PR stunt that brought to life two of Banksy’s most iconic works, Kissing Coppers and Girl With Balloon on the busy streets of Manchester. We ensured our media partners and social team were on site to capture and post the (literally!) tongue in cheek stunt online - see here.
The day before the exhibition opened we hosted a daytime press event, to which we invited key regional, national and broadcast media. Following the press event we curated, hosted and managed the guestlist for an evening launch party which was attended by the region's movers, shakers and key media.
The social team captured live reels, images and story content, as well as managing the online community that weren’t able to attend the event, and resharing posts from party guests throughout the night - really enhancing the Art of Banksy’s social channels both on the night of the event and in the following weeks.
Following the exhibition’s launch we secured a steady flow of influencer and media attendance, and continued to secure reviews and constant coverage across what’s on media. Due to the integrated approach, we were able to maximise results across both social media and our PR campaign. Additionally, in a bid to give Manchester art lovers a more accessible experience we announced to the media that children would go free, causing a massive surge in demand that led to the exhibition extending its opening hours.
In November, Media City played host to Children in Need and with the exhibition located right in the thick of it, we had to get involved! As part of his Children in Need ultra-marathon, we worked with fitness guru Joe Wicks to recreate Banksy’s ‘Girl with a Balloon’ artwork with an iconic Pudsey twist. The painting, coined ‘Wicksy’ was then auctioned off to raise money for the charity.
The Results
Carousel’s expertly strategised PR campaign lead to the team securing a staggering 411 pieces of coverage across national, regional, broadcast and arts media, with a reach of over 3bn in just over 3 months! Highlight coverage secured across the campaign includes BBC News, The Times, Mail Online, Evening Standard, The Independent, ITV Granada Reports, Manchester’s Finest, Manchester Evening News and The Guardian.
We grew the Instagram by over 14% and Facebook by a massive 18.5% reaching over 342k people and engaging with over 9k users in just over two months!
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