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We have worked with the award-winning Buccleuch Arms near Melrose for a number of years. In that time, with our help to fill out those crucial forms, they have won Scottish Inn of the Year on two occasions, Breakfast of the Year and numerous other local and national accolades. One of the owners is now also an MSP and so has handed over much additional responsibility for promoting the 4 Star Inn to Scene & Herd.

Over the years, Scene & Herd has secured coverage for the Buccleuch in their ever important local media countless times but we have also helped to develop their reputation further afield with social media advice and reviews in national publications, in addition to placing them at the centre of key tourist maps.

Scene & Herd is about to commence its fourth year in charge of PR and Marketing for the Gardening Scotland event which welcomes over 30,000 people to Ingliston (Edinburgh) each year for Scotland’s Outdoor Living Festival.

When promoting the event, we used a mix of media relations, competitions, social media and e-marketing.

During the three years undertaken by Scene & Herd so far, visitor numbers to the event have, despite often poor weather forecasts, increased by 5-10 per cent year on year.

Each year, we have secured media coverage in over 40 national, regional and specialist publications, reaching over 2.7 million people across Scotland and beyond.

In addition, we secured broadcast coverage on BBC and STV and a number of regional and national radio stations, reaching far in excess of 1 million viewers/listeners.

In the two months prior to Gardening Scotland, Twitter impressions reached over 139k.

Martin Dare, organiser of Gardening Scotland (and AgriScot – another Scene & Herd client) said the following:

“We saw significant increases in visitor numbers and the way in which the event was promoted using PR was vital to this success. We find Anna, Monty and the team great to work with, providing fresh ideas, timely reporting and an abundance of enthusiasm.”

Farm Stock (Scotland) Ltd, the farmer owned marketing group and one of Scotland’s largest livestock co-operatives, recently announced a record year for business growth. In financial terms, turnover increased by over 22%, but perhaps even more impressive was the growth in numbers of livestock consigned by farmers to be marketed through the group. Sheep numbers alone increased by 14%, year on year.

Ian Watson, chairman of Farm Stock commented:

“I was delighted to report, at our July 2017 AGM, that the hard work of our team is paying off, and we are seeing hugely encouraging year-on-year growth. Our in-house staff have played a huge part in this, however I am also delighted with the PR effort of Scene & Herd – I have no doubt that their successful work in promoting our message within the agricultural media has led to many more farmers actively engaging with us.

“As a co-op, our business model is different from privately owned auction marts and other livestock agents. Some farmers are unfamiliar with the co-op concept, and I am sure this can make for more work – i.e. selling both the concept and the service. However, Scene & Herd has helped us enormously, and I believe our growth results speak for themselves.”

Scene & Herd was one of two agencies running the #wakeuptoorganic campaign, owned by the Organic Trade Board and supported by Scene & Herd client SOPA (Scottish Organic Producers Association), which is a one-day national event that takes place in June. WUTO aims to engage with the public in order to promote an organic and healthy breakfast to the nation.

The overall PR campaign surrounding the event secured over 130 pieces of coverage across consumer, trade and regional titles reaching over 4.2 million people and. when analysed, our efforts in Scotland far outperformed every other area within the UK, despite our size and relatively small population.  Over a third of all media pieces were secured in Scotland (and three times as many as in Greater London), thanks to the efforts and close contacts of Scene & Herd operating on the ground in Scotland.

The Scene & Herd team doesn’t just issue a press release and hope for the best, instead we speak to the network of journalists, across a wide range of publications, which we have spent years building up and growing. We ensure that messages are specifically tailored to be of interest to the media (in this case the focus was on the Scottish regional press) and deliver copy and photography which captures their imagination. In this case, three Scottish organic farmers enjoying an organic breakfast in an East Lothian field saw their faces in numerous titles, somewhat to their own embarrassment! The organisers of the WUTO campaign however, were delighted.

After the campaign, we received the following email from the English PR agency we worked alongside during the campaign:

“We would like to congratulate you with the fabulous coverage for SOPA and the Wake Up To Organic campaign in the Scottish press.”