Landsec

Lando Norris F1 PR Stunt for Clarks Village

How we did it

Lando Norris grew up in the Somerset town of Street, the location of shopping outlet Clarks Village. He attended Millfield School in the town and it was during this period, when he was seven years old, that the new Formula 1 World Champion first started kart racing.

We presented three ideas to the client and we all agreed on the stand-out idea: renaming a street after Lando Norris. Located off Farm Road, between Apple Court and Orchard Square, the street in question would be a pedestrianised avenue at Clarks Village.

We did consider a number of alternative names, including ‘Lando Drive’, but as the street in question was pedestrianised, we felt ‘Lando Lane’ worked better because of the ‘lane’ F1 link and it also had the added alliterative advantage (see what we did there?).

At the point we were briefed, with two races left to run (Qatar and Abu Dhabi) Lando was leading the F1 Championship, but there was no guarantee he would win. Nothing like a bit of PR newsjacking jeopardy. So we planned the whole campaign, commissioned all the suppliers and readied ourselves for what could have been a stunt that would not see the light of day.

That said, the mechanics were relatively straightforward (though when is a PR activation, especially a reactive newsjacking stunt entirely dependent on third parties ever straightforward?): design and produce a street sign and rebrand some shopping trolley Kiddy Cars. Then wait for Lando to put his pedal to the metal.

Literally minutes after Lando crossed the finish line on the Sunday afternoon, the Umpf team issued the pre-prepared media invite, securing immediate responses of intent to attend to the street sign unveiling on the Monday morning.

Less than 24 hours later, early on the Monday, the sign was filmed being put up in front of media.

The results

The PR stunt landed (Lando’d?) almost 100 pieces of coverage, with attendees including BBC national and local, PA Media, Getty, ITV local and Greatest Hits Radio.

Highlight coverage included a national BBC News at One live outside broadcast – which spent a full minute with the camera on the Clarks Village-branded sign – a segment on 5 News, a discussion on the Jeremy Vine TV show, the same on The Chris Evans Show on Virgin radio, local ITV and BBC broadcast, The Sun, Mirror, Metro and Express, front page of the Western Daily Press, plus a shoutout from BBC Bristol who said “The PR people knew what they were doing”.

Read more about our retail PR experience.