Principality Building Society’s House Price Index
Although a recognised brand for its high street presence, sponsorship of Wales’ national stadium, and as a large employer in Wales, Principality Building Society (PBS) wanted to position itself as experts in the housing market and increase its share of voice on the housing agenda in Wales. Our brief was to create a campaign executed through media relations to make Principality a trusted voice in this market in Wales.
Objectives
- To position Principality as experts in housing
- Increase brand awareness by gaining 15 pieces of coverage per quarter, with an emphasis on broadcast and Welsh regional media
- Drive consideration of PBS products by driving traffic to Principality’s products page by 15% over 12 months
0
+
pieces of coverage since April 2017
0
%
of people who read the HPI went on to browse Principality's products page
0
s
of conversations with journalist representing regionally specific media, tailoring the story to the news agenda, region and medium
Content from the Campaign
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Since 2017, we’ve been creating quarterly media stories for Principality’s House Price Index for Wales, working with Principality’s PR, social and online teams. Through the House Price Index, we have regular PR content that is at the heart of the news agenda on housing. Data from the HPI has longevity and is referred back to in media stories during each quarter.
- Principality worked with an in-house designer to create a template for the index which was creative and within brand. As well as giving a market overview and offering information on how individual house types are performing, the HPI included specific information on each 22 local authority. This allowed us to pull out interesting and actionable lines for relevant media and tailor conversations with media accordingly. As a result, we targeted every newspaper in Wales, maximising coverage opportunities.
- We worked closely with broadcast media to pitch our bilingual spokespeople. The broadcast interviews acted as a regular slot for new expert voices from Principality, including Chief Financial Officer, Tom Denman, and has seen him become established as a spokesperson. We sourced case studies, who we briefed carefully to corroborate with the individual message from that HPI.
- To maximise exposure of the HPI across multi channels, we created video content for social media around Welsh communities – content which we know Principality’s Members and social audience are interested in seeing. The concept behind the series of ‘We Love…’ videos was to pick a region with significant house price findings as a news hook for the video, and ask recognisable residents what they love about their hometown. This included Newport (which featured the band Goldie Lookin’ Chain) and Anglesey (which featured Halen Mon, Britain’s most recognisable protected food). We subsequently issued the videos to local media which resulted in WalesOnline creating its own spin-off article called ‘Reasons you should buy a house in Newport’ which embedded the video, and Newport City Council requesting to show the video at the Newport City Summit.
