The story

Three new pick up points to take travellers to Stansted in around an hour. Our idea? Ruffle some feathers with an eye-catching, engaging experiential stunt right in the heart of London.

The idea

We filled a National Express coach with 50 ‘pigeon heads’ and released our kit at Waterloo, Liverpool Street, Paddington and Trafalgar Square over the course of one morning – much to the delight and bemusement of commuters and tourists alike.

What were we thinking? Well, ahead of the Spring Bank Holiday, our client told us it was set to be the biggest weekend yet for travel, with some 300k holidaymakers set to fly from Stansted alone. And when you think of London and flying, our grey feathered friends came straight to mind.

Incentivised with a competition to win flights from Stansted for the best #catchthepigeon selfie, we wanted to create a buzz on the ground, on social and in the media.

 

I really enjoyed the #catchthepigeon event – it was like a treasure hunt across London – and I enjoyed it all the more after I won! I feel very blessed, so thank you to yourself and National Express.

— The Lucky Winner

The numbers

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increase in organic impressions

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increase in engagement on the content we shared

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increase in engagement on Twitter

The whole idea was to attract as much attention as possible, on and offline, to celebrate the new National Express London to Stansted Airport routes. And releasing 50 larger than life pigeons seemed to do the trick.

It was an exciting challenge for us to create and execute an experiential launch and the interaction and interest it received showed the client just what creative PR can do.

When given the chance to take a different view, the possibilities are exciting. We cooed over the response to our pigeon heads, and the client certainly cooed over the fresh approach to PR, giving us the chance to give flight to more ideas of this kind as the year unfolds.

— Amy Eddy, Director at One Black Bear