Online printing company Parrot Print asked Motive to come up with a digital PR campaign which would deliver lots of high authority media links into their website.

Canvas prints of family photos are their main product but we saw with interest that prints of family pets were also popular.

We came up with a contest to find the UK's ugliest pet dog and created a landing page on the website calling for entries.

We then issued a press release linking to the entry page and secured our first round of coverage.

After the coverage started to appear we began to receive entries from dog owners who claimed their dog could be the ugliest in the country.

But it was when Peggy (pictured) entered the contest that we were really able to step things up a gear.

We issued a second release stating early entries had been too pretty, with the notable exception of Peggy.

This secured us a second round of coverage and we were then able to shortlist entries and issue a third release. By now we were picking up TV coverage as well as online attention in the likes of The Mirror, The Sun, Evening Standard and Daily Mail.

Peggy and her owner Holly appeared on ITV's This Morning, BBC Breakfast and Channel 5 News among others and we secured a follow link from BBC News online.

When we announced Peggy as our eventual winner coverage went ballistic and we had journalists on the phone from as far away as Australia and New Zealand trying to line up interviews.

We created a second page on the client's website telling Peggy's unique story and again attracted yet more links.

All told this campaign delivered 830 new high authority links into Parrot Print's website. We also logged 706 coverage items and a total of 12 TV spots.

Peggy enjoyed her prize of a pamper session at a doggie spa and seemed to revel in the media attention, becoming something of a celebrity in her own right.

Motive MD Steve McComish said:

"The success of this campaign shows how even the simplest idea can generate huge amounts of media coverage and backlinks. Peggy's owner Holly was a great sport and lovely to work with and the media loved them both. It was fantastic to see the link numbers climb close to a thousand for this campaign and the results generated will have long lasting benefits for Parrot Print's website."

© MOTIVE