Background
At the heart of everything they do, the team at The Old Stocks Inn have one core value – to provide a stylish, cosy hub from which to explore all the Cotswolds has to offer. To help them tap into the wealth of attractions in the region and provide their guests with the perfect guide, we devised The Cotswold Bucket List – the best 100 things to see, do or experience in the area.
In order to help The Old Stocks Inn curate the 100 entries that would form The Cotswold Bucket List, we launched a campaign that invited local people to submit their hidden gem via an online form. The initial search was covered by the local press and various bloggers, including the Cotswold Journal and the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard, and the hotel’s general manager Charlotte was interviewed live on BBC Radio Gloucestershire and BBC Radio Oxford.
The Old Stocks received an overwhelming amount of entries, with suggestions for places that even the hotel’s knowledgeable local staff had never heard of. Working with the hotel’s troupe, we whittled the list down to 100 entries based on the categories of the interactive map on the hotel’s website, taking as many unusual suggestions that lay off the beaten track as we could.
In order to best convey the spirit of The Cotswold Bucket List, we designed a downloadable booklet that provided further information about each entry in The Old Stocks’ typical warm, quirky voice. We made sure it was the ideal size to print out and fold up in a bag or pocket, with tick boxes for guests to check off where they’d been, and created an online listing section on The Old Stocks’ website for those who’d prefer to use their smartphone or tablet.
While creating The Cotswold Bucket List, we connected with each business, charity or attraction that had been nominated to get them on board, helping to foster great relationships between them and the hotel. So when we launched the list on social media, dozens of them got involved and ensured that our initial Facebook post about the list reached over 8,000 people on launch day.
The Cotswold Bucket List campaign was well received by the press. We designed the campaign to have a number of media touchpoints, allowing us to maximise the impact of the campaign through out its duration. As well as achieving coverage in regional print press, local BBC radio stations across the Cotswolds also picked up on the campaign, as did national travel magazines and parenting blogs. The document is now a staple part of the Old Stocks PR kit when hosting members of the press on review.
