The Cunningly Good Group was approached by entrepreneur and founder of the Munro Beanie, Jo Dytch, in autumn 2023 who was looking for a public relations agency in Perth to provide communications support for her fledgling business to capitalise on the busy pre-Christmas shopping season.

Jo appointed us to provide some ad hoc public relations support in December 2023 to raise the profile of the Munro Beanie among her target market and increase online sales in the run up to Christmas. Founded by the Dunkeld based sports events and fundraising professional during the pandemic in 2020, the company is inspired by the old Scottish tradition of walkers who stitched a red cross to their woolly hats to record the number of summits they had conquered.

The Cunningly Good Group saw an opportunity to capitalise on Jo’s links to Scottish Mountain Rescue in the media, and the fact that she donates £1 to the charity every time one of the beanies is sold. The press release focused on Jo raising over £2,000 for Scottish Mountain Rescue since the company began, a cause close to her heart.

Due to Jo being based in Perthshire, coverage from the press release appeared in The Courier, the Perthshire Advertiser, the Perthshire Magazine and The Quair, as well as achieving some national coverage in lifestyle magazine Scottish Field and business coverage in Scottish Business News. We also set up a full-page feature on Jo which appeared in The Courier’s weekend magazine at the beginning of December and worked with Fiona Outdoors – a leading lifestyle influencer in outdoor activities, who included a review of the beanies in her blog in addition to covering the initial story and shared both to her substantial social media following. The Cunningly Good Group also targeted gift guides of those publications with audiences that matched Jo’s target customers.

The one-off project achieved 16 pieces of media coverage, amounting to an estimated 63,300 views. The CPM of this work (return of investment efficiency) was £5.69 per 100,000 estimated views. As a benchmark, Google search ads average a CPM of £30.57. As a result of the public relations work, sales of the Munro Beanie saw an increase of 30%.