Published by isobel.regan@dontpanicprojects.com
Published Date 02.11.2022 
The agency vying to ride home with an award for its campaign tackling the barriers to women taking up cycling gives us an insight into its approach
Smoking Gun is the home of ingenious comms. We are ambitious for our clients; bold on their behalf. We discover and communicate their stories to the right audiences, enhancing their reputations, driving organisational change and building their brands.
In the case of Bott and Co, a solicitors with specialist expertise in road traffic accident claims, our task was to position the firm as a thought leader in cycling, raising its visibility by owning a topic highly relevant to its potential client base.
We needed to build the right partnerships and content to create a story strong enough to win national media attention and generate quality backlinks. We needed to create a positive movement to tackle the barriers to women taking up cycling. And so our ‘She Can Ride’ campaign was born.
We commissioned research into female attitudes to cycling post-pandemic, which revealed half of women in the UK felt scared to cycle and 90% didn’t own a bike. We created a media story around the shocking findings.
We created a campaign hub featuring an interactive cycle club finder, connecting potential female riders with others to boost participation rates.
We partnered with Paralympian Dame Sarah Storey who became the face of the campaign. As well as commenting on the research, she offered positive and practical tips on how women can get into cycling, which were used in social media video content as well as press interviews.
Finally, revealing the real women behind the data, we sourced and interviewed case studies and told their inspirational stories across channels.
Riding home with dozens of media hits, campaign coverage included The Guardian, Metro, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and Financial Times. Sentiment was resoundingly positive as the press got behind our movement.
Exceeding all digital marcomms KPIs set, we generated backlinks from high domain authority news outlets, drove significant peaks in traffic to the website as coverage hit, and increased page authority by 10%.
Speaking about the UK Search Awards shortlisting, Smoking Gun’s MD Rick Guttridge said: “This campaign brought together inspired insights and a killer execution to help Bott and Co achieve its goal of engaging the cycling community. It’s been a great partnership and after a year of phenomenal recognition for the agency’s digital work, we are delighted to be shortlisted.”
Read the full Smoking Gun ‘She Can Ride’ campaign case study here.
Twitter: @SmokingGunPR
Instagram: @smokinggunpr
