Were Ewe Fooled By Alton Towers

Alton Towers has recently hit the headlines for their sheep graffiti PR campaign. Initially keeping quiet as to who was behind the campaign, it sparked interest with the national press which ran stories with theories as to who was behind the sheep scandal!

Sheep were branded with ‘evil’ looking smiley faces in fields in Devon, all the way up to Perthshire in Scotland. It sparked discussions of potential supernatural powers and UFOs, one farmer stating “It’s like crop circles – but on sheep”.

Although it sparked interest with the national press, especially after Alton Towers’ grand unveiling of its new rollercoaster ‘Smiler’, how successful really was the campaign in captivating interest from confused passersby? According to Jamie Robinson’s piece in PR Week, it wasn’t much of a success.

At the time of his article there had been 885 tweets about the stunt, giving it quite a wide reach through Twitter. However, before the national press picked up on the stunt it only had 81 tweets from members of the public’s speculations.

Despite this low figure, the media interest generated from the mysterious event has been pretty respectable, especially added with the coverage after ‘the grand unveiling’ that it was Alton Towers behind the stunt.

All in all, we think this has been a successful campaign from the PR team at Alton Towers. Although it may not have been much of a success in generating an initial social media buzz, it still reached loads of people who will now be planning their next trip to the theme park to try out their new ride!