Historic Newspapers tasked Square in the Air to run a PR and content campaign to promote the brand ahead of a significant period for the world’s largest private newspaper archive and personalised newspaper gifts.

With the World Cup group stage games coinciding with Father’s Day, SITA led a four-week campaign to deliver results across the end of the Premier League season and World Cup kick-off.

ACTIVITY

To align with Historic Newspapers’ biggest selling books, SITA opted to run one campaign focusing on Arsenal and the end of the Premier League season, and one campaign focusing on England and the World Cup.

For the Arsenal campaign, SITA chose to utilise former Gunners midfielder Paul Merson.

SITA picked Merson to coincide with the Gunners’ first Premier League title win since 2004 and to mark the On This Day anniversary of Arsenal’s memorable 1989 English First Division final-day triumph against Liverpool. Speaking to Merse the morning after Arsenal’s title was sealed, the timing could not have been any better!

For the England campaign, SITA selected former Three Lions winger John Barnes.

SITA chose Barnes to coincide with the 2026 World Cup and to discuss famous moments from past tournaments, including the Hand of God (1986) and World In Motion – England’s official song from the 1990 World Cup featuring John’s legendary rap cameo.

SITA procured and managed Merson and Barnes’ activity, including setting up a photoshoot and hosting interview sessions to deliver the campaign content across PR and Social.

DESIGN

Our design team had the challenge of bringing to life the Historic Newspaper brand using motion through their established visual hierarchy.

To achieve this, we built a versatile visual system that scaled seamlessly across both short-form social and long-form YouTube formats. We anchored the creative concept on repeating themes, scanning headlines from the Historic Newspapers books that featured the words “Arsenal” or “England.” By preserving these raw, high-resolution scans, we maintained the brand’s authentic, tactile heritage. Digitally cropping and layering the headlines allowed us to craft a high-energy, rhythmic ident that is ready for social and long-form use.

RESULTS

From a PR perspective, SITA delivered impressive results with 37 individual pieces of online coverage with a 84% backlink percentage, plus five pieces of print coverage.

Highlights included branded imagery and full-page print spreads across the Daily Mirror, Daily Star, Daily Express, FourFourTwo and Liverpool Echo.

Interested in a PR campaign, design or social support, get in touch here.