Scottish Women's Rural Institute

Keen to attract the next generation of members to the Scottish institution that is ‘The Rural’, the SWRI committee approached Tricker PR to raise their profile. An award winning campaign to attract media coverage and establish the SWRI as a professional commentator on relevant issues followed which included features to dispel the ‘Jam and Jerusalem’ myths. A link up with the distributors of the ‘Desperate Housewives’ DVD boxed set led to television appearances and national media exposure.

But, it was the demise of the traditional ‘recruiting grounds’ of the village shop and post office and school gates as rural shops close and working mothers drive their offspring which had destroyed the social network where word of mouth gained members. Tricker PR showed the SWRI that although their physical social network had all but disappeared, there was a comparable virtual social network in cyber space. So the SWRI skipped the email generation and moved straight to Facebook and Twitter.

It took quite a bit of persuasion (sorry ladies but it has to be said!!) as it was felt by the committee that this was too ‘modern’ for the ‘average’ member, but Tricker PR took the opportunity of a speaking slot at the SWRI annual conference to ask for a show of hand to demonstrate that more than 80% of members access the internet for either shopping or communicating with friends and family.

The SWRI Facebook community is growing and women across Scotland can now share ideas, recipes, hints and tips and a twitter plan is in pace for regular tweets. Tricker PR has even managed to tweet entire recipes in 140 characters!

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