The Piece Hall is a Grade 1 Listed Georgian Cloth Hall – the only remaining building of its kind, harking back to the time when Yorkshire was a world leader in the textile trade.

The impressive courtyard was set to be home to a new statue of philanthropist and Calderdale c19th resident, Anne Lister, whose story inspired the worldwide TV hit, Gentleman Jack.

Social was tasked with maximising the opportunity to promote The Piece Hall and generating a significant buzz around the installation.

The unveiling centred around a visit from Gentleman Jack Star, Suranne Jones, who was available for a very specific and limited time (just 30mintes one Sunday in September).

We knew that given this extremely limited opportunity, we had to ensure that we made every second count. We mapped media interest into three categories: National; Local; and LGBTQ+. We prioritised opportunities and utilised our excellent media contacts to ensure we had good representation from each and were able to offer them something of value.

We enlisted a well-respected photographer, to capture the moment and worked with her to ensure we were able to achieve this in the small amount of time we had. Remaining time was then used to facilitate interviews with national press and local television.

The preparation put into the photo-shoot was what made the difference on this campaign. Working with a photographer who we knew could perform under pressure and capture broadsheet quality imagery, was crucial.

We attained national print coverage in The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, with online coverage on the BBC and Mail Online. Overall, we attained 136 individual pieces of coverage with an estimated 3.95m online views. We hit key targets, getting the main bulletin on BBC Look North and coverage in a variety of LGBTQ+ titles.

We also utilised the news wires and local news networks, to ensure the story was widely syndicated and attracted a massive nationwide audience.

With The Piece Hall featuring in the upcoming series of Gentleman Jack, we positioned the venue as a key location associated with the new series.

We have attracted numerous additional national and international media enquiries resulting from the profile and plan to put these into place to coincide with the new series going live in Spring 2022.

Shortly after the coverage, The Piece Hall recorded its busiest ever weekend since reopening, with 58,850 people visiting.