Transport Exchange – Digital PR Campaign of the month

The idea

In the run up to the end of the Brexit transition period, Distinctly identified a valuable digital PR opportunity for our client, Haulage Exchange, who are part of the Transport Exchange Group. Throughout the negotiation process with the EU, there were many discussions across the media surrounding how the process of hauling goods across the border to Europe would change after the Brexit deadline had passed. 

Having spotted that logistics was at the heart of news coverage at that time, Distinctly wanted to bring Haulage Exchange into the conversation as the negotiations intensified in December, knowing that coverage of the topic would be widespread.

With a network of UK-wide hauliers at their fingertips, Haulage Exchange were in a position to gather data from their customer base on how individual haulage companies had already been impacted, what they were doing to react as a business, and how they believed they would have to adapt in the future.

The process

In order to create a rounded story with which to approach the press, Distinctly compiled a survey consisting of questions designed to gather insight from haulage companies. Having collated the data, we were able to pull out unique insight that we knew journalists were looking for to support and expand their new stories, making our chances of getting coverage extremely high.

Distinctly created a data hub on the Haulage Exchange website – The UK Hauliers Brexit Transition Deadline Survey – which  gave journalists access to the full set of data and acted as a reference point for earning links back to the website.

Having created the data hub, we produced press releases that summarised the data and outreached them to journalists and publications that we identified as being interested in the topic. This included both national and industry-specific publications who had previously covered the topics of logistics, Brexit and politics. 

Results

The promotion of the story in December earned Haulage Exchange 23 pieces of coverage and corresponding links back to their website. This included top tier publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The Sun, and local titles like The Lancashire Times.

Furthermore, after the Brexit transition deadline at the end of December, Distinctly identified new angles to take from the data, resulting in 15 further links to the Haulage Exchange website in January 2021. This included links from industry-relevant websites such as The Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply, and The Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport.

In total this campaign generated 38 pieces of coverage and links for the Haulage Exchange website, and gave the client a platform to get involved with the conversation, positioning them as leaders in the industry.