Travel PR has changed #3: video news releases (VNRs)

It has long been important for travel PRs to secure TV coverage on behalf of its clients. I wrote way back in 2007 about how BBC Holiday and Wish You Were Here gave way to ‘Feelgood Factual’ programmes like Coast and Britain’s Favourite View. I also wrote about how celebrity-led travel programmes are really the only way you can get any decent-length coverage on the main TV channels.

It’s clear that this is still the case by the way, with John Sergeant and Alexander Armstrong battling it out. As with the Griff Rhys Jones and Paul Merton series, it turns out these programmes are prone to stereotypes and storylines too obscure to be worth targeting. And that goes for challenge-based celeb travel programmes too.

So it’s important to either instigate your own series, or make sure that you’re tailoring your client’s news to broadcast.

One way of doing this is by producing your own Video News Release (VNR) footage. A broadcaster can use some or all of the footage to produce their own tailored report on an event or story. They can re-edit the footage, add voiceovers, music, or additional footage including pieces to camera.

Here are a few examples for our client Tourism New South Wales:

1. We produced a Video News Release to maximise UK media coverage of the Vivid Sydney festival. The Video News Release included a 3:00 minute A-Roll package voiced by a reporter and a 10 minute B-Roll that included the best sound bites and cutaways from two filming days. The VNR and Vivid Sydney achieved excellent coverage, specifically in the online fields. Having the video made a huge difference and enabled the websites to take the content and highlight Vivid. Coverage value totaled £1,378,334. Examples of the coverage can be seen here on the BBC, MSN and ITN.

2. Six thousand people in Australia tucked in to an unusual breakfast sitting on the world-famous Sydney Harbour Bridge. The bridge, which on weekdays is packed with commuters on their way to work, was closed to traffic and its eight lanes covered with grass for a picnic, as part of a Sydney food festival.

VNR footage was commissioned, and can be seen in full here. An example of the coverage can be seen here.

Now – VNRs are not new in themselves, but we have certainly been using them much more over the past 12 months with a number of our clients. There is an added cost, but once the potential benefits are made clear to the client, there is a compelling case to find the extra budget.

Another example of this is our recent work for Jamaica and the recent launch of a British Airways service to Montego Bay. We shot the following footage – primarily to be sent to TV networks in Jamaica.

Here it is up on the TTG website.

And here is another example of actual VNR footage from an event we recently held to launch Jamaica’s Jazz & Blues Festival – this footage was sent out to UK and Jamaican media.

We really enjoy working with video, and it is something we will be doing more of as time goes on. The benefits are clear, and as more channels are introduced, and newspapers turn into broadcasters through their websites, it is an area that will grow and grow.