Black Tomato

Black Tomato is a boutique, pre-eminent luxury travel brand, who have been successfully advising and delighting clients on their travel needs since its launch in 2005.

Mercury were tasked with increasing Black Tomato’s standing as thought leaders in a crowded (and often unimaginative) travel sector, and also raising the profile of Co-founder, Tom Marchant, who had successfully grown, with his co-founders, a £30m disruptive business in 14 years.

Mercury oversaw Black Tomato’s UK PR while the company’s UK PR Director was on maternity leave for 11 months, and during this time Mercury secured a substantial total of 105 pieces of coverage. A multitude of face-to-face interviews were arranged with titles such as The Sunday Times, ELLE, The Telegraph, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country, Esquire, Forbes, Robb Report, and Boat International.

Mercury handled both long and short-lead press opportunities, hosted media events, planned trips, launched marketing campaigns, introduced new story angles, mini-campaigns, and significantly gained new PR opportunities outside of the travel press, especially in the business sector.

Our aim was to meet their marketing department’s wider objectives, which included growing Black Tomato’s UK client base, publicising 2019 and 2020 messaging and stories, and building the profile of the company and its Co-Founder. The latter was achieved through interviews such as The Sunday Times ‘How I Made It,’ and an interview slot with BBC World Television, which was secured but the Mercury team.

Mercury also targeted and implemented many partnership collaborations. One notable success was an introduction made to Euromonitor, which added clout through market research, facts and figures to bolster Black Tomato’s projected travel trends.