The story begins with a long list of connections of somebody-knew-somebodywho- highly-recommended-Ketchum Beijing. And thus began a long series of briefing and planning meetings with UCCAL, a fashion distributor in China, with two labels in the spotlight – Just Cavalli and Class Roberto Cavalli.

The meetings helped to narrow down campaign objectives and strategically place PR within the marketing communications sphere by demonstrating the benefits that lifestyle PR and clothing sample loans to media could provide.

During this time, our relationship with the client grew to that of trusted partner and beyond PR, the client had an additional request: “help us increase awareness within the trade for the Cavalli brands without engaging the media.”

Drawing on the Ketchum team’s experience in organizing, managing and running media previews and events, a highprofile, luxury trade preview event was created, with potential franchisees and existing trade partners invited from all of Greater China and overseas.

Hosted at the posh Lan Club in Beijing, guests were treated to the China debut of Roberto Cavalli vodka as well as a first glimpse of the Just Cavalli and Class Roberto Cavalli Spring/Summer 2012 collection.

Upon completion of the trade preview event, all products were transported back to the Ketchum Beijing office where they are currently hosted in our showroom for sample management.

The response from the media so far has been phenomenal, with the showroom regularly emptying out of products for media loans for product shooting. Expected coverage includes front covers of China’s top tier fashion titles, including Femina and Rayli, celebrity feature shoots with top-tier celebrities such as Jay Chou and on-going collaborations with China’s top online fashion photography blog involving supermodels such as Liu Wen and other top-tier celebrities.