A Royal National Mod sponsorship tie-up between The Oban Times weekly newspaper and ferry operator, Caledonian MacBrayne, has meant a marketing coup for the newspaper.
Caithness, the venue for this year's Royal National Mod, was flooded with free copies of The Oban Times late last night – especially hotels and entertainment venues.
The deal meant splendid PR for the Western Highlands weekly which responded with maximum editorial flair by providing front-page coverage and five full broadsheet pages inside of the event, including 40 Mod-related photographs. The stories and pictures were by-lined by Louise Lee and Euan Paterson.
Meanwhile, local Caithness weekly, the John 0'Groat Journal, is carrying a big front-page story today in which local hoteliers claim they were “misled” over Mod hype.
There has been a running debate over whether Caithness, without any real Gaelic language links, should have been hosting the Mod at all.
Now local hoteliers say they were left in the lurch after being told to prepare themselves for thousands of visitors who never arrived.
Wick publican, Ryan Cook, is quoted in his local weekly, saying: “I was told that there were 8000 people coming to the county and we would be running out of room in the pubs.
“I feel we've been totally misled by the hype. The message we were getting was that it was going to be a musical celebration with a massive influx of people and that we should all get involved. So that's what we did, to considerable expense, and then there's nobody here.”
