The month in links- June’s Digital PR highlights

Whilst we’ve all been avoiding this summer’s downpours, our digital PR team has spent the last month doing what they do best – flexing their PR muscles to secure excellent coverage and links for our clients.

Running brand campaigns and press office activity across multiple industries, including health and fitness, spas and wellbeing, automotive, lingerie and travel, in June alone we secured our clients coverage on the likes of Sky News, Forbes, TimeOut, Germany’s biggest news outlet Welt, and Portugal News, among many more.

We found out which global accents are the most relaxing, and revealed which tourist landmarks require the most leg power to enjoy. We ranked the most electric friendly universities in the UK as well as finding out which honeymoon destinations are trending, and we even used Goodreads data to rate BookTok’s spiciest books. Read on to find out more about some of the campaigns we’re most proud of this month.

Brand Campaigns

The World’s Most Physically Demanding Landmarks – PureGym

As a brand, PureGym are obviously a big authority in the health and fitness space, and are well served when it comes to links in these sorts of titles. However, we know there are different verticals we can target for them, if we devise stories that stay relevant to PureGym as a brand, but that also appeal to journalists that cover topics outside of health and fitness.

Travel is one of those areas, so we created an index that looked at the Most Physically Demanding Landmarks in the world, knowing that people tend to ramp up their fitness regimes in the lead up to a holiday (something we actually discovered within our 2024 UK Fitness Report). To do this, we compiled a long list of landmarks that are only accessible by foot, and counted the number of steps required to experience the landmark to its fullest, in addition to average elevation and temperature in the location. We created a newsworthy ranking that appealed to travel and lifestyle media, and scored a range of new linking domains for the PureGym site on the likes of Thrillist, TimeOut and Le Figaro – alongside other linking coverage such as Forbes!

“If you can come up with something that stays relevant to the brand, but also enables you to branch out into new areas of media, it can be a great way to expand your backlink profile. In PureGym’s case, they’re a well known brand with a lot of links pointing to their site, making this essential if we are to keep diversifying the domains linking back to them – and that’s exactly what we’ve done with this campaign. It’s helped to take them into a new area while staying true to who they are, and I’m excited to see where else this campaign lands!” – Richard Paul, Creative Director

Relaxing Accents – SpaSeekers

With accents a topic that always sparks discussion and debate, for SpaSeekers we decided to look at them from a different angle, finding out if there’s a particular accent that is more relaxing to listen to than any other. Partnering with Dr Chris Montgomery from the University of Sheffield, our survey revealed that the Welsh accent is the most relaxing in the UK, with Canadian the most soothing from across the pond, and Italian topping the international charts.

So far, we’ve secured some incredible coverage on national and international titles for this story, including the Mail Online, Mail On Sunday, This Is Money, the Standard and IOL South Africa – not to mention print coverage in the form of The Times, Daily Record and Daily Mirror and broadcast coverage on Radio 1 Breakfast with Greg James and This Morning.

“Many people listen to podcasts to help them relax, and we know from discussions around things like the Cbeebies Bedtime Stories and other podcasts, that some people also find some accents and voices more soothing than others. As SpaSeekers are perfectly positioned to talk about all-things relaxation, it provided us with a great opportunity to combine two popular topics and create a campaign that would spark discussion, whilst resonating with their audience.

“Working with academic experts is always a great way to add a bit more credibility to a campaign too, and in this case it really helped us to take our methodology to the next level.” – Charlotte Brown, Senior Digital PR Executive

Blushing Books – Pour Moi

With #BookTok being a top trending hashtag on TikTok, and a particular interest in #SpicyBookTok, we dove into Goodreads data to reveal which reads will really have you feeling hot this summer. We used Goodreads as it’s such a well-respected forum, and is used by readers worldwide, giving us access to global data for free! We scraped the reviews for 20 keywords which indicate how spicy the content is per item, and we also analysed the number of reviews and average score out of five stars to create our very own spice score. This gave us a definitive ranking of the spiciest BookTok reads overall, as well as looking specifically at romance and the ‘romantasy’ genre to give us optimal pitching opportunities, and multiple ways to cut the data.

We have landed great coverage so far, including building category page links from the likes of Metro, alongside bringing in some new linking domains like BookRiot.

“Sexy lingerie as a category allows us to look at a wide variety of topics. When we were initially discussing things that make you feel sexy there was a lot of discussion around TikTok’s influence on our reading, and how it has more people reaching for a saucy plotline than ever before. This is where the idea of a Goodreads analysis report was created and turned into something that felt relevant to the brand’s audience, as well as the brand identity. We are really pleased with the results so far!” – Maddie Davies, Digital PR Manager

The World’s Friendliest Nations – Remitly (Germany)

To reveal which nations are the friendliest, we conducted a global survey asking respondents to answer questions from the ‘agreeableness’ section of the Big 5 Personality Test. We then translated and localised the content to outreach internationally and build links to our clients corridor pages, in this instance, Remitly’s German domain.

Media in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) loved the story, particularly as Germany featured as one of the top ten friendliest countries. global story has helped us to secure some fantastic new linking domains on the likes of Welt, Reisereporter and 20 Minuten.

Press Office Best Bits

Most In-Demand Hikes – Explore

With Japan and other countries starting to introduce a cap on visitors who want to hike popular trails, we wanted to find out which hikes are really the most in-demand. We used Instagram data to reveal which treks had the most photo uploads per km of trail to find this out, and paired the findings with advice from Explore’s travel experts on finding alternative, quieter hikes.

This fantastic press office story secured 16 pieces of coverage and 10 followed links all directly into Explore’s walking and trekking category page, with national and global coverage on the likes of the NZ Herald and the Scottish Sun.

Electric Universities – Auto Trader

Auto Trader is one of the UK’s leading brands pushing the switch to electric driving. In this press office piece we researched how well universities across the UK were set up for electric vehicles, looking at how many chargers they had available for staff and students, and whether they offered employees any salary schemes for electric car leasing.

The research showed that Worcester University is the best educational institution in the UK for electric vehicles – with Worcester’s local press, as well as the university and local Chamber of Commerce websites publishing the good news.

Scottish Scrap Demand – Scrap Car Comparison

Scotland has introduced new low emission zones in many of its major cities and as a result, our clients at Scrap Car Comparison were seeing increased levels of scrap enquiries from customers whose cars are no longer compliant under the country’s new laws, thus providing us with a perfect reactive story.

This timely story, jumping on a current news hook, scored us coverage from the likes of GB News, Edinburgh Evening News and Aberdeen Business News.

Trending European Honeymoon Destinations – CV Villas

With peak wedding season upon us, we were curious to discover where in Europe is the next hotspot for honeymooners. European travel is all over TikTok, so to find out which destinations have captured the hearts of newly-weds, we analysed year-on-year data for almost 200 locations, discovering which places have received the greatest increase in searches for honeymoon holidays.

So far, we have landed 20 pieces of coverage for this story, with 18 linking pieces all going directly into a key category page, including the likes of the Portugal News.

Do you need some press office prowess to get your experts heard? Want to get your hands on our team’s creative wizardry for your next brand campaign? Get in touch here.