Client: The Rock Bury
The Rock, a new retail and entertainment destination in Bury, opened on 16 July 2010. Democracy was appointed three weeks prior to launch with a brief to use social media to directly engage the target audience within a 20-minute drive of Bury and communicate the content of the scheme.
Democracy delivered a creative social media engagement strategy that was fresh, innovative and award winning.
Brief
- Use social media to directly engage the target audience within a 20-minute drive of Bury and communicate the content of the scheme.
- Gather clean data for future marketing activity.
- Be brave! Ideas to be as fresh and innovative as the concept.
- Drive footfall.
Democracy Response
- Staged a retail first – a Easter Egg hunt using QR codes – to drive footfall into ten participating retailers over Easter 2011.
- Created a Mothers Day creative workshop where children could leave a message for their mum to be uploaded to facebook and showcased on a big screen on Mothers Day to drive footfall.
- Linked with retailers to offer month long competitions showcasing products available at the scheme and capturing data through facebook.
- Maximising engagement by staging a Street Star challenge, encouraging the community to vote for local talent to win a £1K prize.
- Generating online/offline engagement by creating regular content including 5 for £50, ‘Saturday Style’, ’10 of the best’ regular fashion/shopping blogging and a community hauling initiative.
- At launch, created hype by dropping 2,500 prize winning artificial meteor rocks in a ten mile drive circle directing finders to a Facebook application that data captured. Prizes could only be redeemed at The Rock.
- Staging a regional roadshow encouraging people to sing karaoke to Nickleback’s Rockstar for viral circulation.
Democracy PR has continued to build on the huge success of the launch and in the last six months has continually engaged the community with bold creative ideas;
Saturday Style has been a successful mechanic since launch, whereby every Saturday Democracy sends out a style team snapping pictures of stylish shoppers around The Rock, uploading the album on to the Facebook page the following Monday.
- Offline to online engagement always sees an influx of new followers and provides engageing content week in, week out.
- Saturday Style has evolved to a monthly competition , where each week the most popular ‘look’ is featured on the official website, driving traffic to the website www.therockbury.com.
This mechanic also increases footfall as followers are encouraged to visit The Rock every Saturday, for the chance to be ‘spotted’.
The first birthday was another opportunity to engage the active community
- A unique fashion show was devised by Democracy PR involving the UK’s first high-wire catwalk, with high-wire walkers complementing the models on the runway.
- Two weeks prior to launch, a guerrilla ‘flash mob’ team hit towns within a 30-minute drive of Bury including the Rock’s ‘big four’ targets of Blackburn, Bolton, Oldham and Rochdale and danced for the crowds issuing VIP invitations which encouraged them to attend and directed them to the Facebook page, where they could enter a competition to win the ‘Ultimate Rock Experience’.
- A ‘Living Dress’ was created using fresh flowers and was worn by a model then planted in the gardens at the Rock, where it can continually bloom and grow.
- The twitter hashtag #rockfirst was pushed in the build up to the birthday and on the day itself. Due to intelligent targeting the hashtag reached an audience of over 11,000 people.
- The first birthday event showcased a range of activities from schoolchildren taking part in a parade, to performances from up-and-coming bands and artists including Kid British.
In the build up to the birthday Democracy introduced an extremely popular audition process to find the face of Rock TV
- Rock TV is a magazine-style series that ran for a succesion of five episodes, including footage of the first birthday event through to style tips and a restaurant guide.
- Search for a presenter was launched on-line on Facebook and Twitter, to find our TV presenting star.
- Democracy PR engaged more than 1,000 people directly during the four days of promotion by targeting dance and drama schools as well as large city centres and community events within a 30 minute drive of The Rock.
- Auditions were held at the Rock and queues of people lined up to audition. Images were posted on Facebook, along with messages of support from friends and family of those auditioning.
- Branded ‘Do You Rock?’ cards handed out to people who participated and they were encouraged to view the Facebook page to see who had been shortlisted.
- The winner was selected by voters ‘Liking’ the audition on a purpose-built Facebook application 1,691 people plumped for their favourite before the closing date.
- The video content generated in excess of 5,500 views on YouTube and each video was top and tailed with a Rock still to increase awareness of the shopping destination.
- Each week an episode was launched, You Tube activity increased to an average 200 views per week.
Results
- Facebook | Twitter | YouTube
- Bury is now ranked 9th in the top ten retail venues in the North West on Venuescore.
- From a standing start, the Facebook page garnered almost 10,000 fans in six months.
- On Mothers Day, the Rock had THE busiest day since launch.
- Interaction on the Facebook page includes 81,542 picture views and 11,833 wall posts and comments.
- 5 months after opening 1 million people visited for Christmas shopping.
- 3,139 votes were cast via Facebook in the street stars competition.
- 65,000 people attended the opening day of The Rock. Retailers smashed their sales targets by upto 300% over opening weekend.
The latest videos in the Rock YouTube channel
