Spies Travel wanted to promote a campaign selling city holidays in leading media outlets in Denmark. In short, making Spies’ offerings within city holidays relevant for Danish journalists and bloggers across all relevant media types.

So we piggybacked a topical issue of the country’s 27-year-low birthrate, and used survey based PR to discover the insight that Danes have 46% more sex on city holidays. The aim was to position the Do-it-for Denmark campaign and Spies as a knowledge provider and industry thought leader in all relevant media types.

Our logic was that city holidays lead to more romance, romance leads to more sex and more sex leads to more children. Therefore Spies Travel could play an active role in solving Denmark’s problem.

We created a competition with some rather unique entry requirements. Participants needed to take a city holiday, prove they conceived a child on it and have the baby for a chance to win baby related prizes.

The campaign created more than 60 media stories in Denmark alone, and was the subject of a 3 hour national morning TV show. The PR campaign obtained a reach in the Danish media amounting to 13.3 million and an ad value equivalent to DKK 3.1 million (core market for the campaign), international media coverage in wide range of renowned, large publications – Washington Post, mashable, BBC, Reuters USA Today, CNN etc. During the weeks of the campaign, Spies dominated the Danish media landscape.

To position Spies as a knowledge provider and industry thought leader in all relevant media types.

To support Do-it-for-Denmark campaign as much as possible by creating an earned media buzz to drive traffic into the campaign site and increase the number of views of the campaign video.

To continuously respond to media agendas that arise during the campaign and use PR to make use the media opportunities that arise during the campaign.

Target audience: Danes between 25-65

A national survey that investigated and mapped Danes’ love life and attitude towards romance when travelling was conducted.

Output

+ 60 media clippings in Denmark alone

Estimated add value - DKK 3.1 million

Total reach in Denmark – 13.3 million

ROI compared to budget – 1,490 %

Extensive international coverage in BBC, NBC, Fox News, Forbes, The Guardian, Dailymail , Reddit etc.

Knowledge/consideration

Clippings in all national quality dailies

Message pull through: 75 % of all media clippings focused on city breaks and romance

TV coverage in national broadcast

Massive engagement on social media [Tweets, likes etc.]

Business impact

Spies Travels targeted a 5% rise in sales to city destinations. Sales rose 95% compared to the same time last year.

The overall execution was divided into three phases.

1) Preparation: Here the focus was on planning, developing the message platform, preparation of press materials, completion of national survey with +1,000 respondents and the development of media collateral.

2) Execution: This phase focused on the tactical and operational PR towards all relevant media types including pitching of stories, journalist liaison press office, and media monitoring – all in order to secure a targeted PR campaign that creates as much coverage and buzz as possible.

3) Evaluation: This marks the end of the PR effort. A full coverage and media was developed and the follow-up efforts / actions were discussed.

Problem: The Danish fertility rate is the lowest in more than 27 years. For the past two years Danish journalists, politicians and medical professionals have been making the public aware of the alarmingly low birth rate and calling on both the people and the government to do more to help raise the birth rate for the future of Denmark.

This was the perfect starting point for a PR campaign with the potential to resonate in the Danish media landscape.

To tap into the Danish fertility agenda through survey-based PR and strategic partnerships:

In order to break through in earned media, the strategy was to promote the campaign with a national survey that investigated and mapped Danes’ love life and attitude towards romance when travelling.

The findings were subsequently linked directly to the fertility agenda and a certified sexologist was involved to comment on the survey and the key elements of the campaign.