THE MAYOR OF LONDON
LET’S DO LONDON
BRIEF
London was in the middle of a crisis. Thousands of corporates had shut their offices, uncertain when they’d reopen. Tens of thousands of Londoners had left, either moved back with parents or relocated for good. Tube travel and TfL had been devastated, with traveller numbers down over 72% on average.
The result: spending in London, down £1.9 billion. Against this backdrop, Sadiq Khan gave us a brief to launch his new Let’s Do London initiative. A multimillion tourism recovery programme designed to help pump much needed domestic and international visitor cash back into the city’s coffers. We needed to create a media conversation beginning in May that showed shops were open, restaurants were open, and London was open (and safe) to use again.
IDEA
Where do you usually hear advice for where to go for key tourist attractions? Tube tannoy announcements, of course. From ‘alight here for Madame Tussauds, to ‘exit here for the National Portrait Gallery’, these announcements punctuate every commute we make. They’re so entwined with the culture of the city that there are loads of Reddit threads dedicated to spoof announcements, where people try their hand at what they’d love to say on the tannoy.
So, we just handed Londoners the mic.
We rounded up a huge cohort of real-life locals to share their best places to eat out in central London.
A cabbie. A nurse. A disabled volunteer. A paramedic. A busker. And a tonne of the great and good of London, including the Mayor himself, all became the voice of the tube for a month.
Sadiq waxed lyrical about Borough Market, just around the corner from his office, where he’ll often be found getting a burger or a Bao bun on a Friday lunchtime.
Top chef, Angela Hartnett MBE, talked about the wealth of Italian restaurants around Covent Garden.
Table Manners podcast host and singer-songwriter Jessie Ware talked of tapas north of Tottenham Court Road.
It turns out there’s nothing Harry Redknapp loves more than a Brick Lane curry.
And finally, Drag Race star Bimini Bom Boulash, raved about the vegan offerings around Camden Lock.
Dozens of celebs and even more local Londoners were researched, secured, recorded, edited and deployed across the TfL network over the course of the most frantic twelve consecutive days of the agency’s history. It was so much fun though. After months of being locked up, it felt amazing to finally be actually out, clipboard in hand, doing PR again.
RESULTS
We secured over 50 pieces of Grade A prime coverage for the campaign including Stylist, Time Out, Mail Online, Pink News, BBC Radio One, Sky News, Hello, and a ridiculously heavily-branded five-minute segment on The One Show.
All of the titles took a ‘Mayor of London story’ away from its stuffy political news heartland and firmly into lifestyle media.
The biggest team cheer came when the campaign hit the much-loved British pop culture Insta page, @LoveofHuns. We knew we’d made the campaign a genuine cultural moment.
And, despite the campaign coming from a political office, every single piece of coverage was super positive in tone and used hero images and key messages and quotes from our content.
To date the campaign reach totals over 1 billion across print, online, broadcast and social media. Not bad for three weeks work.
Tannoy mic dropped.