Telling stories for the country’s biggest two day show

Show time never stops at Shorthose Russell. As one Royal Norfolk Show ends, we’re already planning creative campaigns for the next. Whether through PR and media coverage, digital marketing or traditional display advertising on the buses of Norwich, it is our job to bring the UK’s largest two-day county show to life. A big part of this year’s campaign was our #ShowStories video project – here’s what we got up to.

The brief
The Royal Norfolk Show encapsulates everything that is great about our county and the agricultural community, not only in Norfolk but across the UK. We proposed to produce a video series to be advertised on social media telling the stories of The Show through its people. From competing young farmers to networking businesses, we sought to cover the full range of people who treasure the event and take part year after year.

Our approach
We identified three key themes of The Show which would form the basis of our campaign:
1. Food, Farming and The Countryside
2. Celebrating the Arts
3. Innovation and Enterprise

Fundamentally, we wanted to celebrate the human element of the Royal Norfolk Show and give viewers a behind-the-scenes insight into why and how different people get involved. The videos were to be short, creative and easily sharable across social media. Facebook campaigns were also planned, aiming to reach very targeted demographics of people based on the content of each of the videos.

The campaign
Once our video themes had been identified, we paired up local businesses and participants who we thought fitted the individual briefs. We then discussed with the video stars our objectives and finalised scripts, locations and dates for filming. All of the videos were edited in house and promoted on Facebook in the weeks leading up to the event. The campaign reached well over 100,000 people, generating 70,000 video plays.