What does it take to capture the imagination of the world’s media? Or, for that matter, the social media zeitgeist?
If, like EVOCA Group, you own a roster of top, international coffee market brands, your Holy Grail is to hit record numbers of media outlets and be inundated with likes, shares, re-tweets and so on.
Take a look out there in the marketplace: there are expert consultants around every corner, all of them eager to persuade you to take their advice on how to get your message ‘out there’; and all of them eager to charge you Big Bucks for the privilege.
So, it’s with a heady sense of irony that we bring you news of one of the biggest PR coups we’ve ever enjoyed. It wasn’t the result of a series of high-powered, Head Office meetings of people in suits: on the contrary, it was the consequence of a quick phone call from one of our customers…
You’ve probably already guessed which story we’re referring to – ‘the world’s first vending machine for homeless people’ – so we won’t re-tell that tale here. In fact, any one of the links we’ve added to the end of this article will take you to the facts of the matter, the organisations and the personalities involved. Instead, we’d like to share with you just how far this story has flown… And although our donation of a Necta Festival machine was motivated by a genuine wish to ease the plight of homeless people, arguably it’s turned out to have been the biggest bang-for-buck PR success we’ve every had…
Our company has always had at its core a real sense of corporate social responsibility. Normally, it manifests itself in our commitment to green manufacturing and to the design of products that deliver optimum performance without guzzling energy.
The fact that our positive response to a request from Selecta to supply a machine to the charity Action Hunger has taken the issues surrounding homelessness back where they belong – to the top of the social agenda – is, in our view, as good as it gets.
And now, throughout the UK and from Washington DC to New Zealand, our story of ‘the world’s first vending machine for homeless people’ is everywhere. Here’s a sample:
Metro, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Mirror, The Nottingham Post, The Independent, BBC News, The Washington Post, Design Week, Capital FM, New Atlas, ITV News, Gizmodo, Church Times, The Lad Bible, CNN, News Hub.
After trawling through 12 full pages of Google listings, and with no end in sight, we ran out of gas. However, we’re sure you get the picture? We’ve been repaid, many times over, for what was simply a random act of kindness.
