We've all been there - trying to find the cheapest car insurance deal or the savings account with the highest interest rate.  So no doubt you've heard of Confused.com.

You can imagine our delight when we recently had the privilege of hosting Kelly Davies, Head of PR at Confused.com, as part of our series of Lunch-time Learning sessions!  Kelly, living and loving every second of her role, was able to pass on some insightful wisdom and advice.  We got a fascinating view into how she has taken Confused.com's PR from fairly non-existent, to a well-respected press office that generates national coverage, daily, through creative campaigns and excellent execution.

A great example she shared was regarding the bleak month of January - the busiest time for car insurance renewals and the toughest competitively for price comparison sites.  Rival brands spend BIG on high-profile campaigns, so how could Kelly do something different that sparked interest in their brand, without costing the earth?

Shall we bubble wrap a street?! Enter 'Accident Avenue'.

The stunt involved bubble wrapping (literally) a Worcester street that, according to Confused.com's data, has one of the highest number of car insurance claims in the UK...

The stunt was seeded online with a targeted teaser campaign, and the launch itself was initially online with exclusive shots posted on Twitter, Flickr and Facebook.

The online buzz helped fuel the offline sell-in, with awareness already on the rise.  A short video 'wrap' of the day was posted on YouTube, while filmed footage of residents' reactions and customers' comments really brought it all to life.

And this is what made it a success - valuable, interesting and varied content.

'Accident Avenue' is a great example of blending new with old - using good old pictures alongside social media to create the buzz, online engagement and offline pitching to boost the launch, and filming of real people in a real street to make it more personal.

The launch-day results were staggering - multiple national and broadcast hits, 100s of online clippings, 1000s of click-throughs to the pictures, 100s of tweets, a huge increase of @confused_com followers...and, the icing on the cake, a significant uplift in traffic to the site on the day of the launch.

From tactical irrelevance to bottom-line influencer - amazing what a LOT of bubble-wrap can do!

Dan