THE CHALLENGE

To coincide with Beavertown’s summer campaign, they asked us to create a PR activation that celebrated real stories of British punters from the pub. The campaign needed to showcase Beavertown as a vehicle for bringing people together and show that the pub was a place for making new, real and fun connections. 

‍THE SOLUTION

We started to look at what cultural trends we could see around how we as consumers made new connections, and found that there was a growing movement that encouraged people to talk to strangers. The pub also felt like the perfect place to strike up a conversation with someone you don’t know, but the majority of us Brits still feel incredibly awkward about doing this. 

So we got thinking — how could we offer a solution to this while at the same time celebrating the stories of people from the pub?

Our solution was to take the well known polite enquiry of “Is this seat taken?” and to turn it on its head. So rather than it being a way to get an extra seat for your own table, we decided to turn those spare stools into tools for connections. 

We did this by placing stools with Beavertown’s signature skull design in nine pubs across the UK. These stools became four-legged ice-breakers: to sit down, pub-goers had to introduce themselves and give a hearty British “Cheers!” — if welcomed, the newcomer could join the table, fostering new connections in a naturally engaging way.

We launched the campaign with research that showed over half of Brits (54%) want to expand their social circles, but more than one in three (35%) don’t know how to start, allowing us to land the story in national media, and regional press for the areas that had stools in their pubs. 

We also teamed up with Katherine Templar Lewis, a cognitive scientist specialising in emotions and behavioural psychology, who provided tips on how to confidently approach strangers. Katherine highlighted that humans are naturally social beings, wired to flourish in groups and communities, which helped strengthen our campaign’s message and allowed us to land tips and advice from Katherine in key lifestyle press. 

Additionally, we collaborated with Arthur Hill (@arthurnfhill, 266K followers), a popular singer, comedian, and content creator, who helped amplify the campaign through social media with an engaging Reel that encouraged his followers to check out their local participating pub.

‍THE RESULTS

The campaign generated over 60 pieces of coverage in national and regional news outlets (online and print), consumer lifestyle media and trade publications, with key campaign messaging and imagery featured across all of the coverage.

Coverage highlights include LADbible, City A.M., i-News (in print), and The Sun.

@arthurnfhill’s Reel amassed over 80K views and over 4,100 likes.

The media coverage from the campaign reached an audience of 267 million, with 1.6 million estimated views and an average Domain Authority of 67.