Chapman Taylor Case Study
Challenge:
- To promote architects Chapman Taylor’s role and work on the St Pancras development to national, broadcast, local, property, architectural and design media
- Demonstrate the practice’s strengths in innovative and unique designs with a strong emphasis on creativity
- Highlight Chapman Taylor’s ability to address difficult briefs, such as listed buildings
- With so many other companies involved in the project, competition for media attention was fierce
Strategy:
- Produce unique collateral that gives people a reason to reference Chapman Taylor
- Ensure Chapman Taylor has materials in all the lead players’ press packs containing quotable quotes – and give quotable quotes to journalists which summarise the story more neatly that the competition
- Host as many key journalists on site visits as possible – few press had seen the development for themselves, so this would create an additional draw and provide a reason to write about us rather than the competition
- Strength in numbers; on site visits work closely with lead architect Arup to give an overview of the wider project
- Produce unusual and stunning photography with captions summarising key aspects of the development, for use as photo-stories by target media
- Piggy-back PR activities of other key players
Tactics:
- Formed a strong relationship with London and Continental Railways (LCR) press office from the outset
- Produced a press information pack which was supplied to LCR to support any central media enquiries, including useful stats and quotable quotes
- New photography was taken of previously unseen areas of the station
- By-lined feature article ideas were pitched to media
- A picture story was issued to all target media giving a sneak preview of the retail area of the station
- Follow-up calls were made to the media, to introduce Chapman Taylor’s work and begin to build relationships
- One to one site visits were arranged with core media, enabling journalists to see the station first-hand and generate their own story angles. Titles included The Sunday Times, RIBA Journal, Architects’ Journal, FX and Retail Week
Results:
From a position of having no coverage at all, Chapman Taylor achieved positive coverage across core national, trade, local and on-line media with a total readership of 4.1 million. The site visits helped build better relationships with key journalists and led to greater awareness of Chapman Taylor’s other projects. For example, Jaffer Kolb, Features Editor at AJ, has now requested a site visit at Chapman Taylor’s Castle Park development in Bristol.
