13 November 2009

Maximising Ecover's partnership with the charity Water Aid has earned Bray Leino a gold award in the corporate responsibility category at the 2009 Chartered Institute of Public Relations West of England PRide Awards.

The campaign was chosen by the judges because of its success in encouraging the media to report on the importance of ecological cleaning and the burden of conventional products in the water system.

To ensure the partnership was appealing to the media, Bray Leino positioned the global water issue as the emotive, accessible and relevant green topic that everyone had an opportunity to do something about. It also negotiated and managed a podcast with Natalie Imbruglia - a truly ethical celebrity who has high relevance with the target audience. Natalie gave her services for free and the podcast was filmed in her London home. The hugely emotive podcast, which was then seeded through online media channels including green.tv, iTunes and YouTube, was viewed in excess of 7,000 times. The resulting national print, broadcast and online coverage carried the story of the partnership across the country. The campaign also produced a return on investment of £26 of coverage generated for every pound spent on PR.