”Since working with Midnight we’ve seen record results. They are experts in tapping into the wisdom we have within our organisation and think creatively about how to get our expertise and key messages out to our audiences.
Midnight is a true business partner, a real extension of the marketing team. They challenge us, provide valuable advice and give us access to expertise that we don’t have in-house. I believe they really care about doing a job well and what it means to our business.
I could not do my job without them!
Jane MargettsFormer Marketing Manager EMEA, Crown Worldwide
The challenge
How Midnight used visual collateral and news hooks to reach an audience of 1 billion to mark Crown Worldwide’s 50th anniversary
When we say we’ll go to any lengths to secure coverage for our clients, that doesn’t usually include asking a 75-year-old man perform push-ups in public on camera as one of our core strategies.
But what turned this situation into something universally newsworthy was the man in question was the owner of a global logistics business, Crown Worldwide – a long-time client of Midnight’s – who had made it a tradition to do press-ups every year on his birthday in front of his team.
The fact that we asked that his efforts be filmed this particular year was part of the company’s 50th anniversary, a celebration for which we had conjured up significant global coverage. (The press-up stunt alone secured 36 items of national and international coverage in publications including Yahoo! Finance, Forbes.com, CNBC.com and the Evening Standard’s standard.co.uk).
The push-up coverage is just one highlight of a 10-year partnership that started with a narrow PR brief for subsidiary Crown Fine Art, and grew into a multi-layered campaign across multiple Crown brands, and finally the parent brand.
Securing audience reach of more than one billion on Crown Worldwide’s anniversary campaign
What we love about long-term partnerships is our client’s belief that we can deliver results, no matter the challenge. With the parent company’s 50th anniversary approaching, Crown asked us to develop a plan to secure coverage celebrating this milestone for one of the world’s longest-established private logistics businesses. Unlike the individual companies under the global brand, Crown Worldwide wasn’t a trading business in its own right and had never been a focus for PR or media coverage. The brand was practically unknown to the media. Not that we saw this as a challenge, as our team stepped up with creative ideas designed to land standout coverage and capture the attention of media outside of Asia.
Right away, we went into brainstorming mode to research and discover hooks with the potential to gain the coverage required. Needless to say, we mined some gold.
Profile interviews with the founder Jim Thompson with BBC World Service, CNN and CNBC were high profile wins. But we needed a hook with global appeal, so we hunted down nuggets that could help build on the story and the fact that Jim founded the company and opened its first office in the Japanese city of Yokohama. When our research uncovered that the mayor of Yokohama had also begun her career in the city 50 years ago, we collaborated on a photo opportunity with the mayor and Jim dressed in Kimono-type robes. It was a simple but fabulous photo opportunity that was used to secure coverage worldwide. Part of the brief was coaching the team on messaging and explaining their strategic positioning, and we spent time interviewing and prepping the team for their media appearance. And, of course, there was the video of the push-ups that news outlets couldn’t resist (as the results above highlighted). Overall, with a limited budget our activity reached over one billion people, engaged with business audiences and customers in over 200 countries, achieved 169 mentions of the anniversary and promoted widespread interaction amongst global Crown employees.
A strategy of highly visual collateral and news hooks to broaden anniversary appeal outside Asia.
Helping make an impact across its global brands
How our relationship with Crown Worldwide developed is typical of many clients. Brought in to provide support in one part of the business, it’s no coincidence we often work in many other parts of the company.
Our partnership with Crown really highlights the breadth of our involvement across its many brands. We’ve supported Crown Records Management, Crown World Mobility, which helps businesses provide support for employees on international assignments, Crown Relocation, its international removals business and Crown Fine Art, incorporating fine art handling, transportation and storage. Our team thrives on the challenge of stepping up to support any part of your business whenever we’re given the call.
In the time we’ve worked with Crown, we’ve shifted from PR provider to PR partner, delivered strategic advice and trusted to deliver PR coverage for the worldwide group brand. Our campaigns have included PR consultancy, media relations, copywriting, market research, film, media training and more. No matter what strategy or campaign we’re asked to deliver, we consistently produce results, prove the value of the client’s investment in PR and do everything necessary to align with the business objective. Except for push-ups. We won’t be doing those…
