Smoke BBQ restaurant wanted to launch with a bang and have a positive buzz around Sheffield, communicating its unique and authentic food concept.

We had less than two weeks to plan and host a media launch event while targeting the city’s huge student community.

Sharing the owners’ colourful Texan story with regional press and bloggers, we hosted an event complete with fire breathing entertainers and a Man vs Food themed challenge for students.

Key results

All media work was complemented with activity on Twitter, Vine and Facebook; platforms used by Smoke BBQ’s target demographic at the time.

• Three regional journalists and seven local bloggers attended the launch event
• Regional media and blogs hit a 500,000 audience reach which according to the census is 95% of the Sheffield population
• The Man Vs Food Vine launch video received 31 retweets reaching a potential audience of over 21,847 Twitter users in seven days
• Smoke was fully booked on every weekend since the PR launch for six months and exceeded all sales targets