Bray Leino wins PR Week award for Cheddarvision
1st November 2007
Bray Leino has been awarded one of the PR industry's highest accolades for the campaign that turned a humble Cheddar cheese into an international media sensation.
The agency won the PR Week award for the best consumer marketing communications campaign of the year (annual fees less than £100,000) for its internet creation Cheddarvision.
The website www.cheddarvision.tv features nothing more than 24x7 webcam footage of a round of Cheddar cheese slowly maturing over the course of a year.
Dubbed by the media as one of the most boring things ever created, the website and its central character were created by Bray Leino for Westcountry Farmhouse Cheesemakers to drive sales and demonstrate that ‘real' Cheddar takes time to mature. To date the website has attracted more than 1.5million visitors and sales have increased by 25%.
While the inherent boringness of watching a cheese mature was always intended to be the secret of Cheddarvision's popularity, the Cheddar was given a series of fun highlights, including a rose for Valentine's Day, a red nose for Comic Relief and a brief absence from the site for a visit to Glastonbury. These were then illustrated in a short time-lapse film which was uploaded to You Tube - this has now been viewed nearly 400,000 times.
Cheddarvision was also designed as a microsite of Westcountry Farmhouse Cheesemaker's main website to carry its brand identity, product information and click through buttons to the main pages. And for those that don't like to be away from the cheese for too long, there is even a downloadable Cheddarvision screensaver.
The appeal of Cheddarvision has attracted analysis in the Guardian's media diary, inspired a front cover and double-page spread in The Guardian G2 with 25 shots of the cheese, discussion and live viewings on GMTV and This Morning, bulletins on SKY, BBC, BBC News 24 and ITV news, website of the week on Steve Wright's Radio 2 show, numerous mentions on Wake Up To Wogan, an interview on Radio 4's Today programme and drivetime debate on Radio 5 Live. Further afield, the site has attracted feature coverage in the New York Times and on CNN's and ABC's nightly news shows.
The story has also been carried on the news pages of the Daily and Saturday Telegraph, The Guardian, Independent, Times, Sunday Times, Daily Star, Daily Sport, Daily Express and run in a raft of regional newspapers.
Bray Leino PR managing partner Roberta Fuke says: "The popularity of Cheddarvision and the media coverage that it has generated has quite simply been amazing. While unquestionably delivering on its original objectives of raising awareness of ‘real' Cheddar and increasing sales, the campaign has achieved so much more. Winning a PR Week award, and receiving the national industry recognition that that brings, is fantastic.
"This campaign has, without doubt, been phenomenal, but it really is just one example of the great work that the Bray Leino team delivers on behalf of its clients week in, week out."
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