Client: The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, an annual ranking of the top 50 best restaurants and bars around the world owned and run by William Reed Business Media.
Challenge: Handle the international PR for The World’s 50 Best Restaurants’ 16th annual awards ceremony in Spain and expand the amount of positive coverage – and the global spread of coverage.
Solution: Every fortnight from April onwards, individual winners of special awards were announced, creating a pipeline of editorial and digital content in the lead-up to the awards ceremony. Further interest was generated one week before the main event with the announcement of the 51-100 list, which caused speculation on traditional media and social platforms. Other activities included #50BestTalks, featuring top chefs; a ‘meet the chefs’ speed dating-style media event; an official press conference; and a food-meets-art event. New: 21 broadcast stations covered the main event. To open the event up to general consumers, people could follow the main ceremony live on TV via a live stream. Following this, The World’s 50 Best Restaurants took RI on as their first global agency of record. PR Week announced this win, touting better media coverage than ever in the brand’s 16-year history. The Relevance International team executed 48 events for The World’s 50 Best Restaurants over the course of three years – managing all aspects of the event from press conferences to lunch and dinners to securing attendance of up to 300 international media for the global awards year after year.
Results:
- More than 300 media attendees during the awards week, with 71,308 pieces of coverage over five months – a seven-fold increase on the prior year; coverage spanned 51 languages across 127 countries.
- Broadcast coverage grew from two pieces of coverage the year prior to 98.
- Reuters had an exclusive worldwide TV interview with the top restaurant on the night. Other stations that covered the event included RAI 1, France 2, BBC World and Channel 5 Asia.
- The number of social media posts featuring The World’s 50 Best Restaurants grew from 6,500 in five months the year prior to 53,717 across the same period for the RI project terms.
- Named a finalist in PRWeek’s Global Awards and Global Event Activation category for The World’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards event.