Drones – those remote-controlled pilotless aircrafts – are being discussed widely in the media.

They have been stressing out bears by flying too close, been used by criminals to drop drugs into US jails and shot down by a Kentucky man while hovering over his house as his daughters sunbathed. These events, and others, have sparked privacy and safety debates in the media and social arenas.

On the flip side, the benefits for commercial and industrial use are huge. Take retail, for example.  Just recently, Amazon proposed drone-only airspace to facilitate high-speed delivery of online goods.

Firefly client, Give as you Live, is a shopping website with a heart and intrinsically linked to innovations in delivery as a promoter of online shopping. Knowing that drone delivery is a trending topic in the UK media, we devised a quick campaign to turn this interest into business results for Give as you Live. We commissioned a survey asking the UK public how they feel about their shopping being delivered by drone. It turns out, much like bears, humans aren’t too keen on drones either.

We found that:

• Less than a third (30%) of British shoppers planning to use them when they become widely available
• The top concern cited by 36% of respondents was the issue of people stealing their deliveries from drones
• One in 20 (5%) admitted that they would consider stealing a package when a drone is landing – naughty!

We timed the release of our survey story to coincide with Amazon’s chief Jeff Bezos hints about the launch of its flying delivery vehicles in Britain, before initiating lift-off worldwide.

The PR results came flying in!

We achieved pick-up in nationals (Daily Star, Press Association), onlines (Yahoo News, BT.com), major regionals (Western daily press, Belfast Telegraph and Lancashire Telegraph) as well as notable retail titles (Essential retail and Internet Retailing). Through our newsjacking, we achieved over 40 articles which contributed to an uplift in organic search – people typing ‘Give as you Live’ into Google – as well as a better sign-up conversion, based on Google Analytics Goals analysis.