We’ve just finished our sixth year as PR lead for Moreton Show. 2026 was the show’s strongest year for coverage and its first on television. Here’s how that happened. It starts with listening Every year we hear what…
By Ruby Edwards4 min read
We’ve just finished our sixth year as PR lead for Moreton Show. 2026 was the show’s strongest year for coverage and its first on television. Here’s how that happened.
It starts with listening
Every year we hear what the show wants from its marketing. For the first five years that came through the show office team. In 2026 we worked directly with the full and sub-committees for the first time. We heard their priorities first-hand and fed back to them through the year.
From there we analyse what works and suggest a plan. Once it’s agreed we put it into action. We manage the budget too.
What changed over six years
In the early years we issued editorial to specialist print. Horse & Hound and Farmer’s Guardian ran the story and the local press followed. Radio interviews have been part of the mix every year. It was good coverage. It reached people who already knew the show.
So the mix changed. Print advertising made way for digital. In 2025 the show featured on Shed & Buried. In 2026 we added a Sky AdSmart television campaign. For the first time the show appeared on local and regional screens in the weeks before opening. Reuters approached the show for a photo opportunity and a mention followed.
Offline mattered as much. A targeted leaflet drop to households around Moreton-in-Marsh ran for the first time. Banners on straw bales around the region gave the show a presence before the gates opened. Email and social reached more people than in any previous year.
More than 20,000 visitors and over 200 exhibitors came through the gates.
The search work
SEO was new to the Moreton Show mix in 2026. Between April and August, visits to the show website from Google search rose from 1,847 a month to 16,298. Search went from 41% of all website traffic to 58%. Visits landing straight on the ticket page from search rose from 208 in April to 2,798 in August.
The 2026 campaign ran under one line: One Day, Every Reason to Go. It carried across every channel, from the television advert to the leaflet drop.
Alongside the search work, You Do Better worked with the show office and the full and sub-committees through the year. We handled media liaison and PR support on the day. We also produced the analytics the committee uses in its pre- and post-show reporting.
Recognition
Moreton Show was shortlisted in the Lifestyle and Community category of the SoGlos Gloucestershire Lifestyle Awards 2026.
Ruby Edwards said: “Our job is to bring ideas and then be honest about what worked and what didn’t.”
Why it works
Moreton Show has attracted notable support over the years. Jeremy Clarkson wrote in The Times: “The Greatest Show on Earth? Most of all, though, I prefer the Moreton-in-Marsh Agricultural and Horse Show.”
That kind of attention doesn’t come from doing the same thing every year. It comes from listening to the people who run the show and being prepared to change the plan.
Read the full Moreton Show case study for the detail on each year’s campaigns.
If your organisation or event wants a marketing partner who listens first and reports back honestly, contact us. You Do Better provide outsourced marketing consultancy across Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire.
When we took on the PR for Moreton Show six years ago, the brief was straightforward: rebuild momentum and bring people back through the gates. Simple enough, although the real insight came later: once you’ve rebuilt, how do you keep growing?
The answer wasn’t to do the same thing bigger. It was to evolve the channels.
Print was working. Then it wasn’t.
In the early years, Moreton Show had solid coverage in specialist titles: Horse & Hound, Farmer’s Guardian, the local press. People who already knew about agricultural shows found it easily. However, the reach had a ceiling.
So in year three, we shifted. We stopped buying more print ads and started building media relationships instead. See the full strategy here.
The result was coverage without the cost, pieces in the Cotswold Journal, Worcester News, So Glos, all earned through PR and media liaison rather than paid advertising alone. We weren’t done.
The breakthrough: finding new audiences
2025 brought something new: Shed & Buried. A lifestyle and entertainment show that reached people who weren’t primarily interested in farming but were interested in the rural experience.
That’s when we realised the show’s audience was bigger than “agricultural”.
2026 went further. We pitched a Sky AdSmart television campaign, the show’s first TV appearance, alongside radio interviews and a targeted leaflet drop. The team refined SEO to capture the search traffic building in the weeks before opening. Plus Reuters picked it up, taking the coverage national.
The result was the strongest year yet: coverage in the Cotswold Journal and Stratford Herald, mentions via Reuters, plus the established social, radio and broadcast activity.
What this means for rural businesses
The lesson here isn’t Moreton Show-specific, it’s that rural audiences, farmers, estate owners, agricultural businesses, aren’t passive. They’re online, they’re on TV, they’re searchable. That said, you have to find them where they actually are, not where you assume they should be.
Read the full case study to see the strategy, the campaigns and the results.
If you’re facing the same challenge, how to reach your rural audience as channels shift, contact us. We work with rural organisations and agricultural shows across Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire.
