You may have seen in previous posts the fun we’ve been having promoting the Big Bang UK Science and Engineering Fair and National Science and Engineering Competition (if not, then why not take a look HERE, HERE and HERE!).
But last week was the main event, held at the Birmingham NEC. And suffice to say the team have been super busy over the last few months to make sure the Big Bang Fair lived up to its name.
Well, working with the lovely people at Engineering UK and the British Science Association, the team smashed it out of the park. The results have been a collective effort that delivered on a massive scale …
For a start, this year has been the most popular fair to date, with registrations pushing towards 100,000 and attendance around 75,000 – that’s a lot of young people. There were numerous VIPs too, including SofS Vince Cable, Nobel Prize winner Sir Tim Hunt and even a couple of astronauts.
Much of that came thanks to some awesome coverage ahead of the event. But the media coverage (which is still coming in thick and fast), from the launch day had a huge impact on attendance – there were 9,000 registrations during the launch day.
We made BBC Breakfast four times, nailed ITV’s Daybreak (three times), hit CBBC Newsround, the BBC World Service News Hour, BBC World Service Tech Tent came down and broadcast live from the Big Bang Fair itself – the first time the team has left the studio. Then there were spots on BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch, ITV’s Alan Titchmarsh Show , BBC WM TV News (twice), ITV Central TV News (twice), BBC WM Radio (twice) and Capital Radio Birmingham.
In print, we scored awesome pieces across The Times (twice, including a double page spread), METRO, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, The Observer, Daily Mail Online, BBC News Online (twice) and the Evening Standard (twice) … phew!
As you might expect, all that coverage generated an awful lot of buzz, with 2,024,145 Twitter accounts reached mentioning the Big Bang Fair and a further 338,728 about the National Science and Engineering Competition. The Big Bang Fair was even trending in the London region.
It really was a special few days and the team all felt properly honoured and proud to have been involved.
