Top Ten AMA Highlights for 2015

2015 has been quite the year for team AMA! From growing the agency and winning awards through to sending the UK’s top media throughout Europe, the highlights have been many. We wanted to share with you our favourite achievements of the year, by presenting our ‘Top Ten AMA Highlights for 2015’ – enjoy!

1. The Only Way is… Bridgend

In March we convinced the stars of award-winning reality TV show The Only Way is Essex to swap sunbeds for surf boards and shoot an entire episode in Bridgend County, South Wales. The stars took to social media to share their Welsh antics, reaching out to an audience of hundreds of thousands, and numerous national newspapers & magazines also picked up the story.

The episode aired twice and TOWIE in Wales trended on Twitter and Facebook two nights running. The whole campaign was worth over £1.5 million AVE (at minimal cost to the client) and exposed Bridgend County to an audience of millions.

2. Bog snorkelling – a 360-degree approach

We wanted to tell the world about the annual World Bog Snorkelling Championships in mid Wales. We organised a special press preview to the event and invited several journalists to come and take part. We secured numerous media including the Daily Mail and Press Association, who took part in this and other World Alternative Games events.

We undertook a 360-degree approach to the trip, enlisting the help of a professional photographer and commissioning a local Welsh videographer to create exclusive online content. The resulting video was showcased on the Daily Mail online and coverage was worth over £100,000 AVE.

3. Slovenia – a winter sporting destination like no other

Slovenia Tourism challenged us to showcase the destination’s winter sporting offer. We organised for ten media outlets to take part in a group press trip alongside a videographer, working with an airline to offer all journalists complimentary flights. The resulting coverage (30 articles in print and online) was worth over £300,000.

The winter sports video was unveiled at a unique ‘Slovenia in London’ event attended by leading journalists and AMA activity has contributed to Slovenia experiencing a 24% increase in UK visitors in the past year.

In an 8 month campaign we helped Slovenia connect to an audience of 51,009,084 million people and achieved a total coverage value of £2,596,852.97.

4. Instagram success: the Bamboo Bicycle Club

The Bamboo Bicycle Club asked us to help increase their following on Instagram. We implemented a story-like campaign that traced the journey of their bikes across the globe, as well as focusing on key events such as their appearance in the London Design Museum’s ‘Cycle Revolution’ exhibit.

The Bamboo Bicycle Club now has a following of 10.2k passionate cycle lovers on Instagram. With this story telling Instagram campaign we helped increase traction and conversation by 400% .

5. VI Hotels and Cycle for Water, a sustainable partnership

In order to promote their environmental credentials, we teamed VI Hotels up with charity initiative Cycle for Water, who are currently undertaking a 25,000km bike ride from France to New Zealand to raise awareness of the lack of clean drinking water in some parts of the world.

The campaign was carefully planned to involve Cycle for Water visiting four key VI Hotels properties, as well as the headquarters in Vienna. Interviews and other articles about Cycle for Water’s progress have been utilised on the VI Hotels blog. The campaign supported the VI Hotels #AustrianWanderlust campaign and generated exciting content.

6. World Travel Market and key events

AMA managed a hugely successful event at this year’s WTM, resulting in some of the most shared social media posts of the entire event. In addition to our strong presence at this year’s World Travel Market we organised a number of client events including the Slovenian Christmas Party held at The Trampery to launch the country’s new winter sports video.

Slovenia’s twitter account @SloveniaInfo, whose tweets had been prepared by A Marr + Associates, was ranked number 2 for the ‘Top Tweets’ at the WTM. The top tweet also focused on Slovenia and utilised the #IFeelLove hashtag. AMA helped attract 300 travel trade and media representatives in November to connect to Slovenia’s brand through event organisation.

7. Positioning Europe’s greatest cave as a scientific wonder

From identifying the cave as an educational must-visit and global attraction through to bringing famous Vloggers along for the ride, team AMA positioned Postojna Cave in Slovenia as a spectacle to be marvelled at and a true scientific wonder. This included coverage in National Geographic Kids magazine and securing video content that received over 10,000 hits in 2 weeks.

AMA helped to expose the Postojna Cave brand to sophisticated and variable media outlets, reaching out to an estimated 200,000 people.

8. We aren’t fools – AMA earns national media recognition in April!

Love your trip to the fish and chip shop? Enjoy fish on Friday? Well, now you can take your love that one step further with fish-scented perfume! That’s what we told the world anyway, and they loved it!

Team AMA was recognised by national media as having one of the best April Fools Day pranks of 2015 by announcing the release of a ‘Smoked Salmon & Lemon Zest’ perfume by Forman & Field. The Daily Express and the Daily Star ranked our prank in their top 10 April Fools Day features!

9. The power of content

From our own blog through to creating copy for our clients, team AMA has led with quality content in 2015. Producing blog posts, social media strategies and engaging content has been high on the agenda and produced beneficial opportunities for both our clients and team AMA. Take a look at our top travel trends for 2016 to see an example of this: http://alexandramarr.com/news

10. The Design Museum – Creating unique opportunities

We love creating unique opportunities for our clients. This year we worked with the Design Museum for their Cycle Revolution exhibition and created a string of opportunities for Bamboo Bicycle Club. Not only did we produce a limited edition beer, we also confirmed talks lead by James Marr, Founder of Bamboo Bicycle Club, to be held at the Design Museum, arranged for Bamboo Bicycle Club products to be stocked in the Design Museum shop and implemented a full social media strategy around the plans which has seen the Bamboo Bicycle Club brand exposed to over 2.5 million social media fans. The bike will be on display for 8 months which will expose the brand to an estimated 170,000 visitors. This was a great success for both team AMA and Bamboo Bicycle Club!

To all who were a part of our year and supported us in any way – we thank you! Here’s to an even better 2016.