Barclays Take One Small Step Competition attracted over 3,650 entries, 46,000 public votes, and over a million website hits.
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The challenge
Demonstrating their support of small and medium-sized businesses, Barclays launched their Take One Small Step competition to reward the 10 freshest business ideas in the country with an equal share of £500,000 in cash. We needed to engage with the media to not only drive entries, but to encourage the public to support their local shortlisted businesses.
Our response
We treated small businesses as consumers creating a campaign that appealed to them in part as business-owners, but primarily as the man on the street, creating a media driven campaign that reached them through lifestyle as well as small business media. Online 'dragon' Julie Meyer was enlisted alongside entry case studies to launch the competition, supported by research into local businesses and their contribution to UK employment figures over the next six months. During the second stage the PR team negotiated and secured the services of supermodel and highly respected business woman Elle Macpherson to drive the voting phase of the competition.
The results
During the five months of the competition, the PR team achieved nine pieces of national newspaper coverage - hitting broadcast outlets and regional newspapers ranging from the BBC World Service to Sky News sofa interview with Eamonn Holmes – as well as 270 regional pieces and over 280 online pieces. The competition metrics far exceeded targets for the competition as over 3,600 entries were received alongside 46,000 votes. In total over one million people visited the website.
