“Ettinger PR made STARMUS a global event.” Stephen Hawking
Starmus is the most ambitious science and astronomy festival the world has seen, with some of the greatest minds in the world involved, including Stephen Hawking, Brian May, Buzz Aldrin, Richard Dawkins, Brian Cox and a host of other nobel prize-winners, astronauts, astrophysicists, biologists and anthropologists.
Starmus 2 & 3 took place in Tenerife due to its advantageous geographical location and the astrophysical observation and research conducted there. Ettinger PR ran the UK campaign for the festival, which generated global exposure. We organised a photocall for Stephen Hawking’s departure to Starmus, securing an exclusive item on his involvement in the festival in the Sunday Times which within 24 hours had been published in newspapers all over the world from Spain and Russia to New Zealand, Canada and all over the US.
In the lead up to the festivals we continued to push out stories that reached the world, using the world’s most influential sources such as Mail online and Huffington Post – the tickets to the festival sold out fast and the event ended up being oversubscribed.
Ettinger PR targeted all the specialist science and astronomy press and coverage published in New Scientist, Focus, Wired, About Space, Astronomy Now, Observatory Magazine and many more.
We organised a press trip to both festival, taking a handful of influential press to cover the fascinating week.
Starmus 4 which took place in June 2017, saw the festival move to Norway’s scientific capital Trondheim. This year there were 11 Nobel laureates taking part.
We ran a 10 month campaign hosting press conferences, with high profile speakers, all over the world (in the lead up to the festival) including Moscow, Stockholm, New York, Brussels and London. Coverage, announcing the festival, was secured in leading publications and broadcast sources in each territory.
The press conference in London at The Royal Society, with Stephen Hawking speaking, resulted in global headlines.
We secured WIRED as print media partner to the festival who commit to running 10 online stories (one per month) and 5 stories during the festival, in addition to social media support throughout and three magazine items, including one front cover story.
Prior to the festival Sunday Times Magazine ran an exclusive front cover story on the three moonwalkers – Buzz Aldrin, Harrison Schmitt and Charlie Duke – who would come together for the first time to do a talk on their extraordinary experiences.
We recruited top media from around the world to attend the festival which generated coverage in Wired, Daily Mail, Sun, New Statesman, Vox, Huffington Post, RT, Forbes, La Republica, El Pais and many more influential sources.