Overview
Ricky Stevens and Ryan Charlwood are an F1 sidecar racing team and double British champions.
Objectives
Shooting Star was retained at the start of 2016 to establish brand ‘Ricky & Ryan’ and increase their profile on and off the racing track. Our brief was to considerably increase their following on Twitter and Facebook to put them on par with other riders in the more popular British Superbike categories, which ultimately would help them secure more sponsors.
Approach
Ricky and Ryan are passionate when it comes to their racing and they train very hard to succeed. They are often seen as the ‘cheeky chaps’ of the sidecar championship.
We created a 10-month PR and social media campaign to showcase Ricky and Ryan’s achievements as they made their bid for a second championship title. One of our aims was to give fans an insight into their life and long-standing friendship off the track.
We built on Ricky and Ryan’s agreed brand values and secured interview opportunities in the key motorsport media. We also filmed them testing in the run up to the races and undertaking various fun challenges against each another.
Results
- Between March and November, the team’s combined Twitter and Facebook following increased from 686 to 7,648.
- We increased reach from 20 times the pair’s following to more than 40 times (47.6 times at peak time in October) and average engagement rate from 7.1% of the following to 10.9%.
- Between 1st March and 30th November, we achieved 72 print / online articles including a six-page feature in Fast Bikes magazine and three broadcast interviews including a 4.5-minute piece on BBC Breakfast.
- Shooting Star won gold and silver for this campaign at the South of England & Channel Islands and Yorkshire & Lincolnshire CIPR PRide Awards 2017.
I was very pleased with the work Shooting Star carried out for Ricky and Ryan. They fully understood the brief and came up with creative ideas to deliver it. They managed to rapidly increase Ricky and Ryan’s social media following while also maintaining and even improving their reach and engagement, which is quite an accomplishment.
