A Warrington PR, content marketing and social media agency is celebrating after being awarded a top industry award for its work with a Cheshire-based social enterprise.
The Victoria Park-based agency, No Brainer, claimed the award for best “Event, Stunt or Launch” at the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) DARE awards following a campaign with Chester-based Big Heritage, a social enterprise engaging museums, schools and communities with Chester’s past.
To mark the launch of Big Heritage’s new Sick to Death visitor attraction on Chester’s city walls, the team created a mystery plague doctor – wearing the notorious beak like mask – that was sent to prowl the streets of Chester.
Local residents took to Twitter and Facebook to share grainy images and videos of the cloaked figure lurking in popular areas of the city.
The city night crawler, dubbed the “Chester Plague Doctor”, landed regional and national press coverage with ITV, BBC, the Mirror, UNILad and the Daily Express speculating on the spooky sightings shortly before it was announced to be a stunt to help the launch the attraction.
The stunt generated thousands of visitors for the attraction in its opening weeks and was crowned the region’s best at the prestigious PRCA DARE Awards.
Gary Jenkins, director and co-founder of No Brainer, said, “The launch of Sick to Death gave us an amazing opportunity to be totally creative with our ideas, and we’re grateful to Dean and the team at Big Heritage team for letting us take such an unorthodox approach to the campaign!
“It shows the power of social media to drive awareness and interest in organisations and attractions…. sometimes all it takes to achieve results is some creativity and a random fancy dress costume!”
Dean Paton, Managing Director at Big Heritage, joined the team at a glitzy awards do hosted at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Manchester. “At Big Heritage, we work hard to engage local museums, schools and communities with our region’s world class history and we were keen for the launch of Sick to Death to make waves. It certainly did that
“We couldn’t have asked for better results in terms of generating media profile and public interest…and we’ve not finished yet! All I’ll say for now is: ‘Watch this space!’”
Founded by Gary Jenkins and Lee Cullen in 2015, No Brainer now works with a range of national brands including HomeServe, Sale Sharks and MBNA as well as Cheshire-based companies such as CH1ChesterBID, Aaron & Partners and Certas Energy
No Brainer was recently crowned ‘New Agency of the Year’ at the PRmoment north awards and last year picked up the ‘New Business of the Year’ title at the coveted Warrington Business Awards. The five-strong team was also named as one of the UK’s hottest start-ups in this year’s StartUps 100 Index.
