Helping Parthian Climbing scale new heights

Parthian Climbing is passionate that climbing should be an activity that’s accessible to all. When the brand opened its fifth centre in the UK in Wandsworth, Parthian Climbing asked Aspire to help raise its profile, reach new audiences in London and get more people to experience the joy of indoor climbing.

Helping to attract climbers from all walks of life has been at the heart of the Parthian Climbing ethos since the brand opened its first climbing centre in Manchester in 2005. 

In recent years, Parthian Climbing has been riding the wave of climbing’s growing popularity with documentaries such as Free Solo bringing a whole new audience to the sport.

Now with the opening of the brand’s fifth UK climbing centre in London, Aspire’s mission was to bring Parthian Climbing to the attention of a mainstream audience in London, gain valuable media exposure and build hype with climbing communities, both new and existing.

To maximise PR opportunities from the opening of Parthian Climbing Wandsworth, Aspire devised and implemented an editorial and social strategy that would create cut-through with credible and authoritative media titles.

Ultimately, the goal was to drive awareness and footfall to the newly opened Wandsworth climbing centre.

We built Parthian Climbing’s strategic PR approach around three pillars.

1. Quality media coverage

2. Launch experiences

To build hype with climbing communities on social channels, we organised 1:1 media and content creator experiences at Parthian Climbing, Wandsworth.

To ensure a good spread of coverage, we invited media contacts from the lifestyle, outdoors, climbing, London and national press. Our launch activity involved:

3. Content creator activity

To enhance visibility and peer-to-peer awareness with audiences who might  be new to climbing, we focused on influential content creators to spread the word about the centre’s facilities and benefits of climbing.

We set up content creators like Amy Jones (@mimilouj) in the centre’s lifestyle areas during events, with the aim to showcase the cafe, social and retail spaces that complement the rope climbing and bouldering walls.

Throughout the campaign, Aspire secured some stand-out features across national press, and outdoors and running media.

The exposure reached new audiences through climbing fitness pieces in The Evening Standard and the i newspaper, expert-led pieces in Women’s Running and Advnture, and family-friendly features in titles such as Time Well Spent Magazine and The London Mother.

Over the course of the campaign, we achieved a total of 36 pieces of coverage, reaching an estimated audience of 474 million (across online and offline titles), with 3.06 million coverage views.

Our two launch events achieved peaks of activity through a range of London and national listings titles, including those with huge reach such as Time Out London.

Parthian engaged Aspire for a further project in March, generating additional awareness for the centre during a visit by GB Olympic climber, 19 year-old Toby Roberts. The project saw Aspire gain some fantastic visibility through a TV segment on BBC London News, which saw an intrepid presenter scale one of Parthian’s state-of-the-art walls. This was followed by a prominent online piece, reaching a combined viewership and online audience of 1.53 million.

Our efforts to open up the centre to a wide audience, showcasing the benefits of climbing to newcomers, were reflected by consistent engagement across social media platforms and with content creators.

Indoor climbing is a sport on the rise and we are proud to be putting Parthian Climbing at its pinnacle in the UK.

Find out more about Parthian Climbing