This week it was one of the most fabulous – or “dragulous” – on record, as we pulled on our high heels and spent a totally bizarre (but rather wonderful) few days working alongside legendary drag queen RuPaul for truTV.
With his smash US TV series “RuPaul’s Drag Race” hitting UK screens for the first time on truTV – and with phoners already in the bag with the likes of Heat, Grazia, The Sunday Mirror, The Sun, PA and Glamour – Ru touched down in London and, quite simply, took the UK media by storm.
With a two-day marathon of press interviews ahead, the team racked-up pieces on the BBC Radio 1 breakfast show, ES magazine, Metro, The Guardian, Daily Star, The Sun, Woman, Attitude, GT, Buzzfeed and London Live – to name just a few!
A quick rest and a swift martini later it was time to head to Café De Paris for one of the most surreal evenings the team has lived through this year as we hosted the star studded search for the first-ever RuPaul’s Drag Race “UK Drag Ambassador”. Yep, we wanted to find a UK drag queen who would front “Untucked” – a truTV exclusive featuring never-seen-before moments from the show.
With the likes of Daisy Lowe, Henry Holland, Jack Guinness, Ashley Roberts, Sam Faiers, Duncan James, Jodie Harsh, Craig Revel Horwood and Sinitta in attendance, the judging panel of Katie Price, Jonathan Ross and RuPaul himself took it upon themselves to judge the culmination of a month-long competition in which drag queens from across the UK were challenged to show their best lip-syncing skills and all round fabulousness to be in with a chance of being crowned RuPaul’s “UK Drag Ambassador”.
A final twelve from the 90 or so drag queens who submitted lip-syncing videos via YouTube to make the big night out battled it out in front of a panel that was by turns surprised, shocked (we saw things we will never be able to unsee) and confused by the whole affair.
With a deluge of pieces from the party and interviews continuing to flooding in from the across the nationals and onlines – a wonderfully eventful, if slightly surreal few days will live long in the memory as we wave Ru a fond farewell as he continues to sashays his way into the collective hearts of the great British public.
Meantime, we’ve nailed coverage pretty much everywhere. The show trended across the UK on the night itself, while the coverage has been off the scale.
We picked up reams of coverage ahead of the event by drip-feeding information about the judging panel. Our Katie Price announcement picked up 120 pieces of coverage, across the likes of Daily Star Online, Mirror Online, Attitude, Heatworld, Digital Spy and Closer Online. Metro and Sunday Mirror covered the Jonathon Ross announcement in their showbiz pages, with online coverage landing on the likes of Female First, Gay Times and Mirror Online.
The Daily Telegraph have fallen in love with the whole thing as they’ve written a complete guide to Drag Race before they ran a quiz so you can find out which drag queen you would be. The event itself was featured in the pages of Closer, Reveal, OK!, Now, Heat, New! and Star magazines, along with coverage on the Mirror Online (here, here and here), the Daily Star Online (here, here and here), Mail Online (here, here, here, here, here and … er … here) alongside the Daily Express, Evening Standard, OK! (here, here and here), Now (here and here), Reveal (here, here and here) as well as LOOK, Heat, Closer, Gay Times, Attitude, and the Beeb
You couldn’t not know that the show was launching on Monday 1 June 2015, with TV picks in Daily Mail Weekend, The Sun TV Mag, Daily Star, Metro, Daily Mail, Heat, LOOK, New!, Reveal, Closer, Standard Online, Reveal Online and The Fuss. Features on Telegraph Online (here and here) and Standard Online added to the buzz around the launch.
Interviews from our media junket have begun landing, with highlights including a Guardian front cover and DPS feature (also online here), a DPS in Grazia magazine, The Sun TV Biz, Mirror Notebook, half page in Metro, Mail Online, Dazed, OK Online, Buzzfeed, Heatworld, i-D Online, The Debrief, LOOK, Grazia Online and So So Gay. RuPaul also popped in to Alan Carr Chatty Man and Lorraine, and was interviewed for the Radio 1 breakfast show and Heat Radio.
All in all a phenomenal team effort. And a cracking combination of event, talent and cracking publicity skills. Not a bad end to the week.
