cottages4you Goes for Gold!

cottages4you and our PR agency, Lucre, was recently awarded the Gold Award for Best Use of Consumer Relations at the CIPR PRide Awards. At a ceremony held at the Queens Hotel in Leeds, the ‘British Beachcombing’ campaign won the top prize for the Yorkshire and Humberside region and will go forward to the national awards next year.

The campaign was to highlight fun things to do in the UK(whatever the weather), to promote coastal areas and drive traffic to www.cottages4you.co.uk. Lucre devised a campaign based around beachcombing which gave people a reason to go and highlighted the geographical spread of the properties within the cottage4you range. Beachcombing consists of wandering along the beach and searching the high water mark for items washed up by the sea. It makes trips to the seaside even more fun and can make coastal walks more interesting. Findings can be anything from semi-precious stones, shells and drift wood to more unusual items.

cottages4you partnered with marine charity Sharks Trust to help with the conservation of skates and rays. Beachcombers were asked to identify and log shark egg case finds, also known as mermaid’s purses. Identification charts and tips for beachcombing were posted on the cottages4you blog so holidaymakers could download the material and get involved with the campaign.

British Beachcombing has generated lots of coverage for cottages4you both in national, regional and broadcast media. The story has been seen in The Daily Express, The Mirror, and The Sunday Times Top 100 Summer Holidays. BBC TV’s Breakfast ran a live outside broadcast from Runswick Bay near Whitby and radio interviews have featured on regional BBC stations as well as BBC Radio FiveLive and BBC Radio Two.

Next year, cottages4you hopes to expand the campaign – watch this space!