Nationwide potholes PR coverage for Protyre Autocare
20 pieces of earned media coverage across eight areas of England
Extensive coverage from key local media outlets, plus national syndication
Average DA56 for coverage and nine backlinks earned to client’s website
Protyre Autocare is the UK’s fastest-growing supplier and fitter of tyres and provider of automotive services, with a network of 184 centres across the UK.
Our aim was to generate a press-ready data set which we could utilise across multiple areas of the country, positioning Protyre Autocare as a helpful ‘friend to the motorist’. This required asking around 150 local authorities the same set of questions, designed to be simple enough to get a usable response and not exceed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) time limits.
OUR APPROACH
We asked every English local authority with responsibility for highways maintenance to tell us the number of potholes reported by members of the public for the first two months of the year, along with the same data for 2024 and 2025.
A total of 98 councils returned usable data which revealed reports of potholes had more than doubled compared to the same period last year.
We produced localised press releases focusing on the areas worst affected by the increase, plus a version on the 17 London boroughs which returned data. This contained helpful information and advice from Protyre Autocare, about how to mitigate against the dangers of hitting a pothole and how to check for damage.
Potholes are a popular news topic and therefore a crowded one, so we worked quickly and smartly to make sure we developed an angle that would work and get there before other similar brands.
We achieved 20 pieces of media coverage across eight English towns, cities and counties – London, Sunderland, Dorset, Buckinghamshire, Devon, Warwickshire, Solihull and Northamptonshire.
Coverage highlights included:
- Three stories in hyper-local titles in Ealing and Chiswick, some of the worst-affected areas of London
- Coverage in two key titles in Dorset, syndicated by MSN and Yahoo! News
- Journalists in Buckinghamshire, Warwickshire and Sunderland following up on the press release to ask their councils for statements on the statistics
The campaign built widespread brand awareness for Protyre Autocare across the country, with coverage achieving an estimated 432,000 online views. Coverage was also shared 47 times across social media.
The activity achieved the aim of positioning Protyre Autocare as a helpful, advice-driven brand which looks out for the welfare of the British motorist.
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