The power PR has on Ecommerce is shown as My Box NZ takes on Sky Television

The power which carefully thought out and strategized PR practices can have on businesses today has been shown in a recent case study. My Box NZ, a business who provide all-access television in competition to Sky, recently went to the NZ Herald with a story describing bullying tactics from Sky Television.

My Box NZ is a company which provides programmed streaming boxes at a one-off cost. This means that those in possession of one can watch any channel they like with no ongoing payments.

Sky Television instructed their law team to advise My Box NZ to stop its practices in fears of streaming content taking over the television industry.

In light of the Sky law team contacting My Box NZ, a press release was published in the New Zealand Herald on Saturday April 29.

The timing of the press release was perfect, as New Zealanders across the country have become disgruntled with the service of Sky over the past few months with prices for Sky Arena pay-per-views becoming dearer. Along with this, services which Sky offer such as SkyGo are of a major concern with the systems constantly letting customers down.

After the press release was published, the My Box NZ website was hit with mass traffic, causing the servers to crash on the website. No server in New Zealand had the capacity to deal with the traffic increase meaning My Box NZ had to change the website hosting to a company in New York.

“I have never seen anything like it, it was incredible. I knew the Herald article would cause an impact but this was something else” says Krish Reddy, owner of My Box NZ.

It was calculated that over the course of two days (from Saturday April 29 to Monday May 1) the My Box NZ website was hit over 130,000 times.

“To put that in perspective, our web programming team told us that One Day cannot even expect that kind of traffic for one of their massive promotions” says Krish.

The impact this has on ecommerce is massive. Online sales will rise dramatically for companies which take heed of what has happened with My Box NZ. It is not an overestimation to say that traffic like this has rarely been seen on New Zealand’s shores.  

Since the case, sales for My Box have risen rapidly. It is a great advertisement that PR can have a major effect on business ecommerce.

“I am looking for more staff to deal with the mass orders we are getting. It is a great dilemma to have,” says Krish.

“It is the type of thing which we look to offer all of our clients. I love the idea of PR being able to directly impact sales for a business. It is something that not many businesses realise but the power of it is hugely untapped,” says Phillip Quay, CEO of social media and public relations company MediaPA in Hamilton.

Some key facts from the NZ Herald press release:

Total hits on My Box NZ website between Saturday April 29 and Monday May 1: 138945
82% of these hits were from New Zealand, meaning 18% or some 25,000 people were abroad from countries such as Australia, Ireland, France, India and more.
Of the hits to the website, 9489 people visited more than one page
No server in New Zealand has the capacity to deal with so much traffic, the My Box NZ website is now being run from a server in New York.

This is just one case of what powerful PR can do. It impacts ecommerce directly and results in major traffic for a business. For any Hamilton business looking to go a step beyond, consider having a look at a PR campaign for similar results.