Canal & River Trust: Duck Campaign

In March 2015, ahead of the first day of spring Canal & River Trust launched its duck campaign to educate the nation on the potential dangers of feeding bread to ducks and other water birds and urge families to adopt healthy eating habits when feeding wildlife on UK waterways. markettiers4dc were tasked with maximising the TV, radio and online coverage around the campaign, to encourage the public to become Friends of the Canal & River Trust, and donate to help keep its 2,000+ miles of waterways safe and healthy.

After a long lead period of intricate logistical planning and dedicated media relations, the campaign’s launch day kicked off with Radio 5 Live’s breakfast show interviewing Mark Robinson, national ecologist for Canal & River Trust. This was followed by Mark and a number of local ecologists across the UK conducting interviews on a multitude of national and regional TV and radio stations including Newsround, Sky News Radio, ITV West, Granada, Tyne & Tees, Central and London, BBC Look North, and 20 regional BBC stations. The trust was also credited on packaged features on ITV’s Good Morning Britain and Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff.

This coverage was supplemented with two pre-recorded video packages, b-roll and additional content for social media produced by markettiers4dc ahead of the campaign, with a lead ecologist teaching children and parents what measures we can all be taking to help keep our wildlife and ecosystems healthy on our waterways for generations to come. This content was distributed to all online UK news and relevant lifestyle outlets, with coverage highlights including Yahoo!, International Business Times, Express, Mirror Online, The Telegraph and Metro. The social sphere has also been very responsive to the campaign, with the likes of Howard Donald from Take That showing his support http://bit.ly/1EV4wpL

In total, markettiers4dc set up 32 interviews across national and regional TV and radio, resulting in the story being covered over 170 times, alongside a host of online news outlet coverage.

“Working with markettiers4dc and its expert video production and media team has definitely helped elevate the campaign. Launch day was incredibly busy with interview requests coming in throughout the day so it was good to have the support of the media team to help arrange logistics and continue with the online sell-in of the videos produced. I look forward to hopefully working with the team in the future.”

Emma Aitken, National Campaigns Manager, Canal & River Trust