Hilton Garden Inn – world’s first ironing club

Tasked with raising awareness of Hilton Garden Inn’s ‘Simple Pleasures’ campaign, the challenge was making a marketing tagline interesting and unusual enough to drive editorial coverage. Having considered the brief, we landed on ironing as a concept – namely because ironing is usually deemed to be the opposite of anything interesting. By turning it on its head, we arrived at something that was unexpected as it was controversial – the world’s first Ironing Club.

Our response?

We set the scene with research – revealing Brits’ ‘Simple Pleasures’, announcing that 72% of Brits opted for ironing as their top household chore to relax and de-stress.

Using this as our hook, we worked with a relaxation expert to create the Ironing Club, which consisted of an ironing class, with soft soothing sounds, aromatherapy oils, aromas of fresh cotton and meditation – available exclusively at Hilton Garden Inn.

Results

We sold-in the story to national and consumer press, pitching the event to listings press to drive event sign-ups. This allowed us to secure coverage across a host of key titles including Sky News, Mail on Sunday, Metro, The i, London Evening Standard, BBC Radio London, LBC and many more.

The success of this lay in its point of difference. By creating something unusual whilst tapping into the topical news agenda, we made ironing interesting – for a while at least…