Wilderness Reserve

Wedding Content Creation & Luxury PR

The Client

Sibton Park estate’s history dates to the Norman period with the foundation of Sibton Abbey in 1150. At the dissolution of monasteries in England the Abbey and all the estates were acquired by the Howard family, Dukes of Norfolk, divided in 1610 and passed hands until the acquisition and build of Sibton Park Manor by the Fleet Street heir Robert Sayer in 1827. Admiring the works of Capability Brown at nearby Heveningham, Sayer extended planting to create a ‘beautifully timbered setting within a parkland bowl’.

Today the Wilderness estate has been restored from records, old photographs and drawings with a walled garden and Orangery formed on the old footings. The manor has been renovated with key views of the parkland opened under renowned landscape architect Kim Wilkie, with the lake de-silted and widened, pleasure grounds and woodland rides restored. A bio-mass boiler provides heating across the estate fuelled by thinning from the extensive forestry as a result of over 100 acres of new planting.

The Brief

Wilderness wanted to increase their online profile both through achieving placements in key-demographic publications focusing on luxury and lifestyle.

At the same time a large part of the brief was focused on developing the search visibility of a new brand, specifically competing in the luxury wedding venue, corporate retreats and weekend break verticals.

The Strategy

We decided to focus on a two-tiered approach to maximise the short-term impact of link development strategy.

At a more tactical level we focused on building the Wilderness messaging, communicating to journalists the unique story behind the Wilderness Reserve and the luxury exclusivity that it offers. This enabled us to be very proactive using imagery and quotes for location guides and gallery pieces, while at the same time being reactive and looking for incoming media requests for imagery, quotes and locations.

This tactical approach allowed us to target multiple sectors with a similar strategy, focusing on travel, wedding, luxury, regional and business media.

Additionally as well as using a tactical approach we used larger strategic content pieces to focus on bigger coverage wins from the mainstream press that aligned with the key business objectives.

These included some research into the most unusual wedding venues, which we then had watercolour images created for each venue which were then outreached to the national press and wedding press.

The Results

The campaign achieved 44 high-authority links from the national and luxury lifestyle press. These included pieces in Stylist, Yahoo, Vogue, Country Living, CN Traveller, Red Magazine, The Lady, Top Sante, MSN and GQ.

In addition to this there were many placements across smaller sites, specialist wedding and travel press and regional publications.