BAND & BROWN SCOOPS HIGHLY COMMENDED AT PR WEEK AWARDS

Band & Brown Communications beat off competition from hundreds of campaigns to be ‘Highly Commended’ at this year’s PR Week Awards for the launch of the London Historical Records, 1500s-1900s on family history website Ancestry.co.uk – narrowly missing out on the ‘best use of research’ top prize to the eventual campaign of the year.

The campaign proved that indeed all roads do lead to London – with over 165 million people worldwide having an ancestral connection to our capital, including half of the British population. One of the unlikely people highlighted with a London connection was Britney Spears, whose great-grandparents’ marriage in Tottenham features in the collection.

The campaign achieved widespread national coverage and led directly to a 30 per cent increase in traffic on Ancestry.co.uk and a 57 per cent uplift in new subscriptions over the two weeks following launch, generating more than £100,000 in subscription revenue for a campaign spend of under £20,000.