Today sees the landing of United Utilities’ Superpipe in Blackpool – the culmination of years of work from the publically listed water company in the North West.
Over the last few days, Superpipe has been transported from Lough Foyle, Northern Ireland, where it was assembled to the Fylde Coast in Blackpool where it will be laid on the sea bed.
The pipe itself, a great feat of engineering, measures 3.74km by 2.5m diameter making it the largest outfall pipeline in the water industry.
Our core role within this activity has been to control messaging and enhance brand reputation. To do this we have focussed in on the engineering elements of the announcement, the gargantuan task of floating a pipe which weighs over 20 tonnes across the Irish Sea – and battling against the forces of nature to safeguard its transition.
Secondary to this we controlled messaging around the pipe being part of a £100m investment into the area – to help improve the bathing water quality in the North West and showcase United Utilities as world leaders in engineering.
Working alongside the organisation we engaged with the local council and LoveMyBeach (a beach focussed part of Keep Britain Tidy) to offer media the key spokespeople they desire – who can highlight the positive elements as a result of the work United Utilities are undertaking.
We also advised on the ‘hero’ elements needed to make this story a success – the scale of it. To convey this we advised on drone footage to capture the pipe snaking into the Blackpool coastline. This footage – being filmed today – will be rapidly edited by markettiers to deliver to online media outlets who have already been pre-pitched to.
On top of this, markettiers have undertaken outreach to all relevant key broadcast media around Blackpool to ensure all customers in the North West are aware of the work United Utilities is undertaking. We have secured the Superpipe’s project manager into the BBC TV NWT morning news reports, crews on-location for lunchtime news and both evening news segments as well as ITV Granada Reports covering at lunchtime and evening. BBC Radio Lancashire was also on-site to record an on-the-ground interview – with local commercial stations Wish FM, Wire FM, Tower FM, Peak FM, Peak 2, Pulse FM and Wave 102 all pre-recording interviews with our spokesperson.