How we got our digital PR campaign for Blackcircles.com spoken about in Parliament.

The UK is currently facing a pothole pandemic, with research suggesting that the roads in England alone cost over £14 billion.

Motorists all over the UK face potholes every day and the government has announced that councils in England will have to prove that they are taking steps towards repairing pothole-plagued roads or risk losing millions in funding. 

So, with the country’s pothole pandemic continuing to dominate the UK news cycle, we knew we had to act.

We teamed up with online tyre specialist Blackcircles.com to highlight the extent of potholes in the UK and the results spoke for themselves.

We wanted to launch a campaign that would earn high-authority and relevant links and media coverage from national, regional and industry-specific publications, make an impact and bring even more attention to the pressing issue that’s costing motorists big money.

The Client.

Blackcircles.com is the UK’s leading online tyre retailer, pioneering the way motorists buy tyres since its launch in 2001.

The brand has transformed the tyre-buying experience by combining competitive pricing, expert advice, and a seamless digital journey. With a network of over 2,200 trusted independent garages nationwide, Blackcircles.com makes it easy for drivers to choose the right tyres, book a local fitting, and pay securely online—all in just a few clicks.

Customer satisfaction sits at the heart of Blackcircles.com’s success, with a long-standing commitment to convenience, transparency, and exceptional service. This ethos has earned them a loyal customer base and a reputation as the go-to destination for buying tyres online in the UK.

The Brief.

As part of our ongoing partnership with Blackcircles.com, we wanted to launch a digital PR campaign that would do more than just earn authoritative links; it needed to position the brand as a trusted voice in motoring, spark national conversation, and resonate with both media and motorists.

We set out to create a campaign rooted in real-world relevance, with the dual goal of earning widespread media coverage and building brand credibility around a topic that directly impacts Blackcircles.com’s customers.

With pothole problems dominating headlines and driver frustrations mounting across the country, it was clear there was an opportunity to spotlight a major motoring issue; one that directly ties into tyre damage, a core part of the Blackcircles.com proposition.

Our brief was clear: drive impactful digital PR coverage, align the campaign with Blackcircles.com’s brand positioning, and build a narrative that connected journalistic interest with the brand’s commercial relevance.

The Strategy.

Our client is the UK’s leading online tyre retailer, and our early strategy sessions and customer research made it crystal clear that potholes and tyres don’t mix; and that one of the most common problems after hitting one is sidewall damage.

Pothole damage. Tyre replacement.

We had our campaign hook, and scoped out an idea that would see us reveal the areas of the UK that are not only home to the poorest quality roads, but also the financial implication of the damage caused by a lack of road maintenance.

As well as ranking the UK areas with the most potholes reported, we wanted to expand the concept to reveal insights into the local authorities that have spent the most on pothole repairs and those that have paid out the most in vehicle damages. 

But how did we actually go about doing this?

We sent the following Freedom of Information requests to all London councils and the local authorities of the 50 most populated towns and cities outside London:

1. The number of potholes recorded each year (2020-2025), including potholes reported by the public and confirmed through council inspections (if these are reported differently)
2. The number of individual potholes repaired each year (2020-2025), including temporary repairs (e.g., patching) and permanent repairs (e.g., resurfacing). Note this refers to the number of individual potholes that were repaired, not the total number of repairs.
3. The total annual cost of pothole repairs, if available.

First, we revealed the UK local authorities with the most potholes in 2024. We then normalised this against the road length in kilometres in each local authority to reveal the areas with the most potholes per 100 kilometres of road. We also calculated the percentage of change in reported potholes between 2020 and 2024. 

We repeated this process for the annual total of potholes repaired and each local authority’s cost of pothole repairs. 

We sourced the road lengths from the Department for Transport and the average payout for pothole-related damage claims was taken from the RAC.

The total number of reported road collisions caused by potholes in each local authority in England and Wales was taken from the Department for Transport. This was normalised against ONS population figures to find the proportion of accidents per 100,000 people. 

We also surveyed 2,000 people in the UK, asking the questions:

• ‘On average, how quickly do you feel potholes are typically resolved in your local area?
• ‘Have you ever experienced damage to your vehicle due to potholes?

We used all of the data above to create an engaging and relevant digital PR campaign that we knew would resonate with journalists.

The Results.

We pitched the campaign to national and regional press and industry-specific motoring publications, as well as sending the research to each of the local councils.

We hooked into the current news agenda surrounding potholes and The UK Pothole Report secured some amazing coverage on new referring domains in less than a week after being launched.

Here’s a highlight of the coverage we earned:

Publication	DR
Daily Record	81
The Scottish Sun	77
Fleet News	75
carwow	74
LondonWorld	56
Highways News	44

While the campaign secured over 20 pieces of coverage in less than a week after being launched, the real highlight of this campaign was it being spoken about in Parliament.

On 7th April, Kevin Bonavia MP delivered a speech in Parliament concerning Stevenage’s pothole-plagued roads. As part of the speech, the MP for Stevenage highlighted a key stat from The Pothole Report.

“Statistics from the online retailer Blackcircles.com show that Hertfordshire had the highest average payout for pothole-related claims in the UK, with an average of £367 per claim in 2023.”

This campaign is a prime example of demonstrating that digital PR isn’t just about links and how digital PR can have a much wider impact. You should never be creating something just for a ‘link’, you need to be creating content and stories that you know will resonate with your client’s target audience. 

The success of this campaign has been driven by several different factors, but a special mention has to go to the watertight data.

A lot of planning was undertaken before the FOI requests were submitted to enable us to have a variety of angles that would capture the attention of UK press by generating bold headlines. While the data was solid, the concept was highly relevant to the Blackcircles brand, showcasing authority and trustworthiness and positioning the retailer as a leading voice in tackling the problem head on.

This combination meant that the campaign landed in front of a Labour MP who knew the problems potholes were presenting in his local constituency.

While a key role of digital PR is often to earn authoritative links, the brand benefits go so much further than ‘just a link’.

In the case of this campaign, the research has been used in a debate in Parliament to highlight the issue many Brits are facing and to urge the government to do more to tackle the issue. 

Talk about digital PR helping to do good and push for real change.