Last year Parker briefed us on their very exciting launch of not only a brand new pen collection but a brand new pen technology. You have the mechanical pencil, roller ball, ball point, fountain pen…and now Parker 5th Technology, an ink refill like no other and the first true innovation in pens for 30 years.
Our launch campaign in 2011 on Parker 5th Technology and its first collection – Ingenuity – achieved extensive editorial coverage in key targets such as FT How to spend it, Telegraph Ultratravel, pocket-lint.com, Live, T3 and Stuff. This year, we were briefed to continue promoting the launch. Old news you might say, however, it challenged us to brainstorm new angles for a not-so-new launch. We got to work and identified a key advantage of the pen technology: its resistance to temperature and pressure-induced leaks (which can happen with a fountain pen) as a strong story angle for the travel media…it won’t leak on the plane!
This epiphany inspired us to create a specific PR activity capitalising on this particular element. We are currently focusing on targeting key national travel press such as The Sunday Times, Financial Times and London Evening Standard with a creative mailer of travel essentials including the all-important pen to trial on-board their next flight with accompanying notepad, a book of their choice and some tinned sweets. As a result, Parker is encouraging other markets (including Japan, Russia and USA) to follow Focus PR as “industry experts” and do the same.
