BladeRunner PR Campaign is a ‘cut above the rest’

The challenge with any new product launch isn’t just about the initial impact - but how a presence can be maintained over time, which is why the PR team behind the launch of BladeRunner is so proud of the press campaign they’ve run on behalf of Artex over the last two years.

With BladeRunner, Artex responded to a genuine gap in the market with a revolutionary way to cut plasterboard, which is safer and faster to use than a conventional utility knife. The PR team was tasked with communicating these key benefits to builders and housebuilders and promoting the margin opportunity to builders’ merchants, as part of a fully integrated campaign which also included advertising, online activity and POS.

A press launch in 2008 was attended by ten editors across the housebuilding, merchant, building and decorating titles and the product launch was covered by all magazines across these target sectors.

In addition, CIB agreed a competition with Professional Builder spanning eight months, which invited readers to submit why they considered themselves a ‘cut above the rest’ (the strapline for BladeRunner), with the chance to win a BladeRunner branded Mercedes van.  The mechanic for this was a crucial mechanism for engaging a traditionally change adverse sector, as each month Roger Bisby visited a site and gave a tradesman the freedom to review the tool for themselves, with the verdict published as a full page article. This achieved valuable third party endorsement for the new innovation.

This year, the PR campaign was successfully extended with regular series’ in Professional Builder, Professional Builders’ Merchant and Professional Housebuilder & Property Developer. Monthly columns ‘Brought to you by BladeRunner’ are running in all three titles, each one tailored to the readership and reflecting a slightly different key message to keep the momentum going. 

In total, 1,390 single column centimetres of coverage was achieved from the initial launch with Emma and Amy securing an additional 2,100scc’s so far this year, through the extended campaign. All in all, the PR campaign has generated almost 2,000 enquiries over the last two years - with three months activity yet to come.

Here’s Emma on site - interviewing some builders for the December ‘Can’t do without..’ column for Professional Builder.