Alcohol Change UK

Cutting through the January noise

Every January, people make resolutions. Most of them last about a week. The team behind the Dry Jan challenge wanted to change that. They asked us to get people talking about the campaign, drive traffic to their website, and ultimately, get people signing up on their app.

But grabbing attention in the first week of January is tough. You’re competing with a mountain of gym deals and diet ads. If you want people to commit, you have to stand out.

Serving up stories, not lectures

Nobody likes being lectured. So, we didn’t preach. Our charity PR experts served up hard facts, real human stories, and practical advice. We rolled out data-packed press releases and put the charity’s policy experts front and centre for media interviews.

We also knew we needed to reach specific crowds in ways that felt natural to them. To get men talking, we tied our content directly to the World Cup. To grab the attention of young men, we built an exclusive media partnership. And to make sure the rest of the country heard the message, we launched a massive broadcast campaign.

By pairing expert advice with real-life case studies, we didn’t just tell people to put the glass down. We showed them exactly how to do it, and why they’d feel brilliant doing it.

• Coverage secured in the MailOnline/Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, BBC Breakfast, Metro and The Sun, amongst others
• More than 50% of coverage included a link, with an average domain authority of 70
• Contributed to increase in overall number of sign-ups with 130,000 people signing up to take part in Dry January
• Generated a 243% increase in mentions compared to 2020 and a 600% increase from 2019 campaign in UK mentions
• Generated a 150% increase in global mentions compared to 2020
• Secured a partnership with digital-only platform JOE with an exclusive feature around sober shaming, particularly in men, featuring case studies from Alcohol Change UK

“The team at Definition were great to work with and together we achieved some brilliant results for our Dry January 2022 campaign, achieving a huge increase in media coverage and more mentions of Alcohol Change UK, the charity behind the campaign. From start to finish, they’ve been fully engaged and supportive in every stage in the process leading to some excellent results.”

Julie Symes, Senior Communications Manager, Alcohol Change UK