Cracking Christmas surprise with rechargeable sex toy company, Ricky.com

Ricky

PR Campaign

Project Overview

In the year the global pandemic took hold, Herd worked with Ricky.com, a rechargeable sex toy company, to deliver a product PR campaign that would bring fun and frolics to the UK, just in time for Christmas 2020.

The unique offering, along with a playful press release helped secure 50 show-stopping backlinks in high quality publications such as LADbible, Metro, and The Sun.

Not only did the campaign boost the quality score of the website, but it also improved user behaviour signals, driving visitors to the site and ultimately, increasing revenue for the growing sex toy company.

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Results

A selection of key statistics from this PR Campaign:

+10,346 page views
+2064 new users
50 high-quality backlinks
+350 shares on social media
+22,000 Sessions (Dec 2020)
9.5k Additional revenue (Dec 2020)

The Brief

Ricky.com was a start-up brand, eager to build brand awareness and increase the number of visitors to their site. With this in mind, our PR team put on their creative hats to produce a product PR campaign that resulted in some very impressive results.

Key Objectives

To deliver a campaign with a limited budget, securing high authority, relevant backlinks to a new (and very unique!) product - a Christmas cracker with a sex toy surprise.

How we did it

Our approach was to create a unique product that could be bought as a sexy surprise gift for a loved one – raising an eyebrow and a smile at Christmas time during the pandemic.

Once the idea was finalised, the company went away to develop a limited edition Christmas cracker with a cheeky sex toy surprise hidden inside.

A new product page was developed, describing the unique product including its key features and functionality to pull through product reviews. A supporting blog post was written to announce the product and our in-house development team updated the banner image on the homepage – you couldn’t miss this new and exciting product!

Next, we set our sights on creating stand-out product PR to promote the exclusive product. Our herd produced some enticing product photography and a tongue-in-cheek press release highlighting the strains of lockdown and why it was ‘time for a tug’ with Ricky’s brand new product for Christmas.

The release was syndicated out to a list of relevant publications, including journalists who have covered similar topics and publications that have categories on-site dedicated to ‘sex and relationships’.

It was then all systems go, responding to journalist enquiries to ensure we received the coverage the product deserved.

Gareth, Tim and the whole team at Herd have been exceptional. They are an agency that really go above and beyond to help you succeed. We’re a new start-up brand and they’ve been really supportive in these early days to guide us and build a phenomenal e-commerce website on a limited budget. When you find an agency who will reply to your 9pm emails – you know they’re living and breathing your business right alongside you.

Tom Thurlow, Founder, Ricky.com

Project Highlights

1

Banner image

The development team implemented a dedicated banner image on the homepage, featuring Ricky Rabbit and the cracker with links to the new product page.

2

Product page development

A product page was created to include imagery, a unique product description and functionality to pull through reviews.

3

Product photography

We shot lifestyle photography of the product to be used on social media, email newsletters, and press release syndication.

4

Press release creation

A tongue-in-cheek press release was created to pitch the new product to relevant news outlets.

5

Campaign syndication

Using our media directory, a seeding list was generated and our press release was syndicated to high authority publications.

Development Highlights

1

High performance website

We designed an exciting and playful new site with UX functionality at the forefront, incorporating ‘Find the right vibrator’ menu with images for quick access to the right product first time.

2

Custom Shopify filtering

On product listing pages. Shopify does not offer out-of-the-box filtering of PLPs. Herd's smart tagging app allows for the introduction of SEO friendly pages based on product attributes.

3

Mega drop down navigation

We developed a custom mega drop down navigation that includes selectable images for each product range and category.

4

Advanced SEO functionality

To give a competitive edge for long tail searches, we included overrides in Liquid in combination with collection metafields. We matched the tag against metafield data as well as images and content spots.

5

Inspirational content hub

We developed an inspirational and informational content hub with aggregated landing page which pulls in other blog categories – Ricky News, Sex Guru and Real Life.

6

Reviews.io integration

Custom integration reinforces trust signals from positive customer reviews and improves conversion rates and visibility in search engines.