DNPR Featured Across the BBC for #CrossingDivides

Earlier this year, Darren Northeast PR landed the kind of national coverage that public relations dreams are made from – a major news feature across BBC platforms about intergenerational working, using us as a case study. BBC’s business reporter, Dougal Shaw, visited our office with the theme of the news item being “Crossing Divides”.

This theme focused on how young people in the modern workplace are being given important responsibilities, while managing teams that include colleagues older than them. In our case, the spotlight was on Theo Meddelton and Charlie Rose, our Operations Manager and PR Account Manager respectively. Their working relationship and age gap was highlighted as an example of the modern day workplace and how they navigate this intriguing challenge.

Now usually, we are always searching for PR opportunities and coverage for our clients. However, in this instance, we were thrust into the limelight with Darren Northeast PR being the perfect fit for this particular news feature! This turned out to be fantastic exposure for ourselves, especially because of the exposure and coverage we gained via a range of different outlets and social media platforms.

Theo Meddelton explains: “We’re always on the lookout for opportunities such as this for our clients, and we make it our business to keep in touch with journalists and stay abreast of their areas of interest and the stories their covering – but unusually on this particular occasion it was actually us who fit the bill!”

When it hit at the end of February, the story appeared across BBC online, both as a video interview and written piece, featured across three different BBC radio stations and was televised on the BBC News Channel, BBC World Service and local BBC news.

The engagement level and response to our news feature was truly breathtaking and more than we could ever hope for. The interactions truly speak for themselves with the social media figures attesting to how our BBC news feature resonated with such a large audience. The story drew 180,000 views, 3,000 likes and 189 comments on BBC’s LinkedIn Editors news highlights. There were 1,000 reactions and 272 comments on Facebook, 60,000 views and 650 comments on Instagram and 35,000 views, 87 likes, 35 retweets and 26 comments on the BBC Twitter account. The coverage doesn’t stop there too with our news feature being covered in an article on both CIPR Influence Magazine and Dorsetbiznews.co.uk.

Theo continues: 

“So often with media outlets, especially news media, timing is everything, so I was quick to make contact with Dougal and invite him down to our offices in Bournemouth. We were able to settle on the nature of the story, and made sure we could accommodate everything he needed on the day, so he came away with some great material which worked across multiple media.

“But the full extent of the coverage came as a bit of a surprise it has to be said – it went everywhere! The response from our clients and contacts has been fantastic too – it’s been widely seen and we’ve had very positive feedback.”

This has been a great opportunity for our PR agency to highlight our diverse team of professionals and how individuals from different generations can come together to understand one another and work effectively to achieve desired results.