A PR campaign showcasing Monmouthshire’s local food and drink producers and positioning the county as a go-to destination in the UK for food-related breaks.

The Brief

Generate awareness for Monmouthshire being one of the UK’s leading foodie destinations and provide a platform for local food and drink businesses to tell their story to Britain’s travel, food and drink media.

Our Solution

- Run a live online media conference to get Monmouthshire’s local food and drink producers to share their (and Monmouthshire’s) culinary story

- Focus campaign messaging on the high-quality, locally sourced produce that Monmouthshire’s food and drink businesses use, whether it’s the local honey used in Wye Valley Meadery’s mead or White Castle Vineyard’s Decanter gold medal winning wine (Wales’ first vintage to win such an award)

- Create a series of newsletters to recruit businesses to take part in the campaign and provide a series of social media assets for them to share on their platforms, signalling their support for the campaign

- Design an event invite and distribute to leading travel / food and drink media

- Run the ‘Monmouthshire Foodscapes’ live media event around St. David’s Day, a day when Wales is celebrated globally, to maximise awareness

- Support businesses taking part by running pre-event workshops to demonstrate how the event would run, what to prepare, likely media questions and more

- Create a Monmouthshire Foodscapes media pack and distribute to attendees post-event, providing them with information on all businesses involved

- Run a series of press trips after the event for attendees / food and drink media to experience Monmouthshire’s culinary offering first-hand

- Produce a series of short videos from the event for each producer to use on their social media platforms and websites. The videos could then also be hosted on the Visit Monmouthshire website: https://www.visitmonmouthshire.com/monmouthshire-foodscapes.aspx

What They Said

"The AM+A team put together an innovative, superbly executed campaign that not only helped raise awareness for Monmouthshire as the food capital of Wales, but also provided a platform for our local businesses and stakeholders to share their story to leading UK media representatives. From working closely with us to set campaign deliverables, to distributing stakeholder newsletters and creating / sharing social media assets with our businesses, AM+A ensured that every facet of the campaign was geared towards maximising stakeholder engagement and hitting our project goals. The campaign culminated in an online media conference with over 45 attendees, helping Visit Monmouthshire and our stakeholders showcase what makes us special and how we have adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic."
Nicola Edwards; Destination Manager at Monmouthshire County Council

The Results

- We brought together 11 local food and drink producers for the ‘Monmouthshire Foodscapes Online Media Conference’, providing a platform for them to share their products and culinary story with media

- Another 11 businesses (22 in total) joined the campaign, sharing assets on social media and promoting the campaign to their followers

- 47 leading travel, food and drink media attended the conference, including from BBC Good Food, Good Housekeeping and The Independent

- We organised two individual and one group press trip following the media conference (including The Telegraph and Best Magazine)

- As a result of additional pitching and PR activities, we were able to generate national media coverage that reached a total of 8,099,754 people

- Supporting social media content reached an additional 49,497 people, and all social media assets created for the businesses were sent to them for future use

Skills & Services Delivered

- Press office services

- PR strategy development and implementation

- Event management

- Press trip management

- Strategic partnerships

- Social media marketing

- Content creation and post-production

- Digital marketing

- Destination representation

Recent Work