I want to share a little story, about Rise at Seven and Ricky.com. A client we won in February and why we decided to take them on...

About Ricky - Tom's story

Ricky.com is a small independently owned online sex toy business that launched last year. Tom (the owner) had this idea for a few years, saved up some money, sold his house, and moved into an office space camping on the floor to set up this new venture.

Tom travelled the world on a mission to create the best sex toys available to humanity. He almost got scammed and even once got stopped at customs with a suitcase full of vibrators. His stories are incredible.

But he was ready to change his own life and give this his best shot.

He set up his site, worked with a freelance designer to create logos and graphics, had a whole room full of stock and went live!

Over time, Tom made a few sales, built up a close-knit social media community and it was slowly growing. He worked with a few agencies, produced content, PR activity and email marketing but he just wanted more. And after following us, speaking to our Digital PR exec Mark Rofe, and seeing our work on

What are Rise at Sevens 3 F's and what do they mean?

We launched Rise at Seven because we LOVE what we do. We get up in the morning and love our jobs. We love doing audits. We love writing title tags and meta descriptions (ok maybe not me personally). We LOVE building links. We love seeing our hard work result in actual revenue. We love making you look and feel good.

Passion to drive results because we actually REALLY care is at the heart of everything we do, so when Ricky.com got in touch we thought about the three Fs - Fun, Finance and Fame.

After speaking to Tom, we quickly discovered he wasn't driving high revenue figures (yet) and didn't have huge budgets. Meaning short term - this client wasn't going to tick the finance box. Ricky.com weren't necessarily well known either, so short term didn't tick the fame box either. But, when we spoke to Tom what we did know was this account would be FUN! Tom wanted different. He wanted to push boundaries. He wanted to be famous (his brand). He wanted to work with Rise to help him do that.

When myself and Stephen Kenwright set up the agency, we wrote a list of dream brands we want to work with before we die. Some were small local businesses and some were huge global brands even my nana would recognize. One of them being Love Honey or Ann Summers (Ok, I hope my nan doesn't know what Love Honey or Ann Summers is). But we knew we wanted to work with a brand that was a little bit saucy, a little bit naughty, who (let's be honest) are in a growing market. The sex toy market is HUGE and we had our eyes on it from day 1.

And we had Ricky.com in front of us that was exactly that. And although he wasn't going to be a big client in terms of revenue - he had great products, a beautiful site, a loyal social media following AND a brand. It had legs.

So we decided, why don't we help him be the next Love Honey. It's a challenge and we like a challenge! We know exactly what this site needs in terms of SEO and digital strategy, the brand is already there! So we said yes!

What we've done so far...

To start off with, we needed to use Ricky's budget strategically. And although a lot of work in SEO and on-site content is needed, the business needed sales. We needed to make noise and money. And what we know makes fast and easy sales - is product PR! Although we typically build links to the site through a content marketing story-led approach, product PR link acquisition is what we like to call a triple whammy solution.

• We get links into the site to build the authority of the domain for SEO
• We get product links too
• We sell and it converts!

So that's what we started with.

With Easter coming up, we worked with Ricky.com to launch an exclusive product - The Ricky Easter Egg with a sex toy surprise inside. Yes, that's right! An adult version of a kinder egg.

These products already existed on-site, just wrapped up in thick chocolate and packaged beautifully for PR appeal. With the mission to sell out (because the last thing he wanted, was a room full of melting easter chocolate with vibrators inside going to waste), we packaged up the story to send to all UK national media and lifestyle publications.

We launched this to press and within days, the story spread. Landing links and media coverage on The Sun, OK mag, Metro, Gizmodo, Daily Record, The Tab, Yahoo, Daily Star and more. Social media went crazy for the toy with a couple of well-known celebs even buying one too ;)

Within just a few weeks, we had SOLD OUT. Not only that but the internal links, extra content and CTA's drove extra sales throughout the site and allowed us to create a strong customer database who loved this sort of product.

We helped Ricky go from £0 revenue to making 5 figures in a few weeks purely through noise-making product PR link acquisition.

For us, taking on this work was made on a decision of care. We knew what he and we were capable of doing together. We knew it will be a lot of work, maybe a little ambitious but most importantly, we knew it would be fun for us and our staff whilst we did it. Sometimes business decisions are made for other reasons than to make us rich. Yes, we are running a fast-growing agency with the need to cover costs. But during these times especially, you realise it's good to be supportive, help someone grow because we all started somewhere.

We are a start-up just like Ricky.com but we share the same vision to one day be big, competitive and different. Partnering with brands with that same vision is exactly what we will continue to do.

A few words from Tom...

"It’s been a real pleasure to work together with Rise at Seven on my business which I’ve invested all my money and time into. When you’ve risked everything into an idea you believe in, it’s important to work with people who bring bags of enthusiasm and track record with them - something Carrie and Stephen sincerely have done. Thanks guys and Mark specifically."