We have said in a previous post that, in terms of generating column inches and getting your brand’s name out there, surveys work. We know that because here at Bvisible, we’ve conducted numerous surveys for clients and the resulting coverage has been substantial.

So we thought we’d wallow in the glory of the results achieved for two recent surveys by lastminute.com, which demonstrates once again the value of this PR tactic and the direct impact it can have on website traffic and sales.

Financial Affairs

At the beginning of March a survey was commissioned looking at the financial secrets we keep from our partners to tie in with lastminute.com’s Top Secret Hotels Sale. As anything related to personal finances is very topical in Ireland right now, we believed that a survey on this subject matter would prove to be a discussion point and be highly newsworthy across a range of media.

Does money comes before love and how secretive are people in Ireland when it comes to their financial affairs?  The survey revealed that one in ten Irish people hide money from their partner, with 34 per cent having more than €5,000 in their secret bank account. Surprisingly, a lot of men would find lies about money harder to forgive than a full blown affair!

With these great results we achieved some record-breaking coverage across a range of media:
- News pieces in all seven national newspapers
- Two different articles in each of the highest read newspapers, Irish Independent (Circ: 149,906) and Irish Times (Circ: 102,543)
- Feature Pieces in The Irish Independent and Irish Daily Mirror (Circ: 61,143)
- Coverage on highly popular news website journal.ie for the first time with 876 views of the story tallied to date
As well as print and online , national  radio and TV were drawn to the survey results and theme:
- Radio highlights included an 8-minute piece on national station Today FM as well as a 38-minute phone-in discussion on financial infidelity on Dublin radio station Q102
- National TV channel TV3 covered it on two programmes – Ireland AM and Midday
- Other  national radio station interviews, included Newstalk and  Limerick station Live 95FM

The campaign delivered a total PR value of over €305,300 for a fraction of that in spend, while the survey also had a significant sales impact. The day following the survey, flight transactions on the site were up by 333% on the previous year.

Irish Language Survey

Following swiftly on from our financial infidelity survey we decided to find out how fluent Irish people are in their native tongue to coincide with both St. Patrick’s Day and Seachtain na Gaeilge. The results surprised us and revealed that half of those surveyed say they can speak Irish fluently. And for those of us who may think the language is dead, the young people of the country yielded the most startling results with 56% of those between 18 and 25 years claiming to speak the language fluently.

Again there was a great media response to this survey – highlights included coverage on national and regional radio stations, national TV station TV3, national newspapers the Irish Examiner and the Irish Independent, as well as a range of website and influential bloggers.

To wrap up

In total the two surveys had a very substantial PR value of €398,000. More importantly, they have delivered strong brand recognition for lastminute.com in Ireland, as well as significant annual increases in website traffic and bookings.