Category

Events

Dec 03
0

OnBrand Supporting Local Charities to Brighten St Albans this Christmas

By | Blog, Events, Shopping Centres

At OnBrand we are great believers in bringing the community together. We absolutely love what Sustainable St Albans are doing to brighten up the wider area and bring a Christmas spirit with their Festive Streets project.

The project encourages homes, shops and businesses to decorate their windows during the festive season, to create a safe way of celebrating and bringing local communities together. 

As experts in retail design, we want to support this initiative and have created a template of a 2-dimensional Christmas star, as well as a more dynamic 3-dimensional option.  

  

Both of these can be downloaded below and have easy to follow guides. It can then be decorated with some materials you may have at home, for example some old newspaper, left over wrapping paper or just get the kids crafting! 

Click below to start downloading. 

Download sustainable star option 1

Download sustainable star option 2

Download sustainable star option 3

We’ve also seen “The Rainbow Trail” that started earlier this week, which is an amazing way to bring the community together whilst raising money for local charities. Check it out here.

It involves creating festive displays, virtual Christmas decorations and Spotting the Red Robin. Just like the rainbow drawings for the NHS over the summer, please look out for the Red Robin in people’s homes.  

Also, keep an eye out for the fantastically Christmas dressed post boxes in aid of charity too. You can do so by clicking here!

So, get decorating and let’s work together to make Christmas in St Albans 2020 a bright, sparkly one! 

Jul 06
0

10 questions every business owner should be asking about their marketing RIGHT NOW

By | Audio, Blog, Branding, Digital, Events, In-Store, On The Phone, PR, Social

As businesses start to re-open their doors once more, it’s safe to say we’ve officially entered the realm of the ‘new normal.’ But what does this mean for your business and, crucially, your marketing plans?

It’s probably an understatement to say that the way you run your business has had to adapt in recent weeks.  With this in mind, it’s almost certain that your pre-lockdown marketing plans need to be re-shaped too, so that you can be confident your comms channels are working as hard as they possibly can.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed?  Don’t worry, we’ve put together 10 questions you should be asking yourself about your marketing right now.  And, of course, if your answers to these questions lead you to thinking you need a helping hand with anything, the OnBrand team are ready to take any marketing load off your mind!!

Your 10 questions start here

  1. What’s changed in my market/economy?
    Change isn’t always a bad thing.  For example, it may be that your target audience’s shopping behaviour has changed; they may be shopping less, but spending more.  Could this be an opportunity to look at ways to upsell or increase basket size online?
  2. What are my competitors doing?
    Whilst assessing what new opportunities there may be for you out there, don’t forget to check out what your competitors are doing too.  Think about what makes your brand/business different and how you can achieve stand out amongst all the ‘New Normal’ noise.
  3. What are my comms priorities?
    Whilst it might feel like you should be putting spend across each and every touchpoint, it’s better to do a few things really well, than spread your budget too thinly across too many channels. Think about which channels are working best for you right now and ensure those you choose to put resource behind will help you reach your overall business objectives.
  4. What skills are missing in my team that I need to take control of?
    With businesses having to make tough staffing decisions over recent weeks, you may find there are skillsets you need to tap into right now that aren’t covered within your team.  At OnBrand, our team cover a range of different marketing disciplines, so whatever the gap, we have an expert on hand to help!
  5. How much do I need to change my original 2020 marketing plan?
    It’s unlikely your marketing plan from the beginning of 2020 is going to be exactly the same now.  Take time to really assess which parts are still going to deliver, and which areas need a tweak!
  6. What new needs do my customers have? 
    The world has changed for everyone. Not only are businesses needing to make changes, but consumers are having to approach every day tasks and responsibilities differently.  Do your customers have any new needs that you can help them with?
  7. Do we have the right level of comms activity running to reach our customers?
    If you’ve been one of the businesses that have had to shut-up-shop during lockdown, it may be that you’re needing to ramp up your comms activity more than you originally planned to at this time of year.  Take a look at your marketing spend for the year so far – perhaps there’s budget you ended up not using during lockdown that you should be thinking about re-apportioning to really create impact now that you’re back up and running again?
  8. Do we need to revise our business goals?
    Do your business goals still reflect the market you find yourself in?  If they’re now seeming unrealistic or you’re needing to change your approach, make sure you re-align your business goals so that you have something to measure success with by the end of the year.
  9. Is our website/e-commerce platform robust enough to respond to changes within the business model?
    There’s no denying that since lockdown, the world has become more digital than ever.  People are spending even more time scrolling on their phones.  How well do you engage with your audience across digital platforms?  Is your website optimised for e-commerce?
  10. What am I doing to keep my brand visible and top of mind? 
    Of course, reaching your customers is key, so it’s important to think through which channels are going to work hardest at doing this for you.  It’s also important to think x-channel.  How are you engaging on social media?  Do you have an email database you can segment with the right targeted messages? Are you running an affiliate program?  We can help you explore which channels are right for your business, and look at your overarching content strategy so that not only are you appearing across the best channels for your brand, but so that your messaging really cuts through and stays top of mind.

Lots to think about!  Want to chat through ways we might be able to help?  Email: sayhello@onbrand.co.uk or call 03333 22 00 22

May 03
0

Oh what fun! Great times with The Brewery Shopping Centre…

By | Case Study, Events, Shopping Centres

Whilst in lockdown, we’ve noticed the number of people taking time to reminisce about the ‘good times’ has definitely increased across social media.   Of course, we couldn’t help but take a little trip down memory lane ourselves…

Today, we’re reflecting on all the fun we’ve had so far working with The Brewery Shopping Centre, Romford.

When we were awarded the marketing contract in October 2018, we couldn’t wait to get stuck in, after all, who doesn’t love creating social media posts, thinking up events and making sure a website is in order? No? Oh, maybe that’s just us then…

…And a lot has happened in a year and a half of working with this awesome centre and management team. Get ready…

EVENTS

We love it when a client gives us the scope to be creative, and The Brewery get gold stars for this. We always like to make sure customers are happy and that we build memories, and we’re pleased to say, we think we’ve done just that, from family fun to community initiatives. Here’s just two!

Hug a Hedgehog (Family fun)

We created a Hug A Hedgehog event taking inspiration from one of the murals from the Brewery’s Art Trail project.  This kicked off the half term holidays activities and the strategy was to continue supporting and driving awareness of the Walk On The Wild Side project.  Hug A Hedgehog was designed to be an engaging, fun and a free event for families.

The results: An increased footfall of 2.2% and happy customers…
‘Aw it’s nice they do things like this for free.  It’s always fun to stop by.’ PARENT.

The Brewery Sleepout

With a high proportion of homelessness in the area, Centre Manager Tom Stobbart wanted to use the community and retailer influence of the shopping centre to make a change. Working with Kim Merry, founder of Homeless charity Hope4Havering, the concept of a retailer and management sleepout in the centre’s carpark was coined.

The results: Social reach soared to 12,317 and fundraising targets doubled to over £10k. Press in local papers and on radio also raised awareness of this very important topic, while retailers felt they were part of something important, thus boosting morale.

SOCIAL TALKS

Wow, who knew that social strategies could do such great things? Well, in this case we like to think it has, because we’re so pleased to announce that we have grown the Brewery’s social media reach from an average of 9k reach to 46k a month. That’s an increase of over 500%! How? Well, in a nutshell… We began with a hook of competitions (more of that below) and then, once we’d reeled everyone in, we got to work on a social strategy. We’re not afraid to admit, we created content around a trial and error approach – some posts worked better than others, but that’s what gave us the insight to work out what came next.

The result: A comprehensive strategy including community posts, real-life posts and a sprinkling of fun memes with celebrity ideas to boot.

COMPETITIONS

We love talking to people on the ground and that includes retailers. And it’s a good thing too, because our engagement with these guys means we secured 15 competitions over a 12 month period.

The results: A total of 2,609 entries and 19 very happy winners. On average we receive over 100 entries per a competition, and our most successful prize to date has been 2 tickets to Vue Cinema… #justsaying.

WEB WISE

Websites eh, they do a lot of work to bring in footfall and we know how important they are. That’s why over the year and a half that we have worked with the Brewery, we’ve ensured information such as opening and closing times, new stores and events are always updated.

The results: Website traffic is up 25% y-o-y in Q4, New Users up 23% y-o-y in Q4 and the bounce rate is also consistent y-o-y. The latter means that users are finding the information they need efficiently, which means we get a gold star 😊.

GROWING EMAIL

Yup, like a website, this is also a medium that’s key to driving that footfall and we’ve worked hard to grow the database through competitions, regular newsletters and raising the Brewery activities via the website.

The results: Grown email database from 4,735  to  7,977.  That’s a massive  40.7% database increase!

So that’s it in a bigger than average nutshell. Want your centre to be as great as this? Give us a call now!

 

 

 

 

Apr 14
0

A Positive Throwback: How we got Whitney Houston to drive engagement for Baytree Shopping Centre on Valentine’s Day…

By | Audio, Blog, Case Study, Events, In-Store, PR, Shopping Centres, Social

We thought we’d enjoy a little interlude from what’s going on in the mainstream news, to spread a little cheer and share  one of our favourite campaigns from earlier this year.

Question for you…What do you get when you mix a shopping centre, a dollop of love, a spoonful of Whitney Houston and some clever radio marketing alongside a sprinkle of social media magic?

An interesting recipe right?  Read on…

A bit of background

OnBrand’s history is deeply centred around radio, so much so that the whole company used to be called Centre Radio. And we’re proud to supply our most cost effective product, Centre Radio, to a wide range of different shopping malls up and down the country, with a variety of playlists and recorded messaging that can be updated and loaded quickly, especially in times when you need to react in a crisis.

We can make you feel good

We’re often reminding people that sounds can encourage a range of emotions. But did you know that positive feelings created by music can also help to increase both dwell time and sales in a shopping centre?  You can read more about the science behind it here.

However, today we’re not going to talk about science. Here’s an update on how we used Centre Radio creatively to have a bit of fun this Valentine’s Day at The Baytree Shopping Centre.

What went down

The Baytree Shopping Centre wanted to launch a simple Valentine’s Day competition, but with a twist. Something that would make shoppers want to ‘dance with somebody’ and engage them within the centre and on social media channels.

Centre Manager, Dan Foley didn’t really need to look very much further than OnBrand. We got right to the heart of the brief, which would mix all the elements together… (any Whitney fans getting our references yet?)

The chart-topping idea

A week-long competition that encouraged people to listen out for Whitney Houston’s, ‘I will always love you’ and then message the centre’s Facebook with the time that they heard it, in a bid to win a Valentine’s Gift Bundle.

Working closely with our audio team to ensure the track was played when the ‘Clock strike(d) upon the hour,’  our social media gurus then set to work promoting this awesome competition on the socials.

With a tightly planned schedule, we created banner advertising, posts and fun teasers, encouraging people to go into the centre and listen out for the tune, while giving them clear instructions on how to apply for a chance of winning.

The results

We generated plenty of seasonal engagement around this awesome competition, with customers emailing us to let us know they had specifically visited the centre just so they could hear the song… footfall – tick!

Another customer was also so chuffed at the ‘creativity’ they mentioned it in their entry comment.

And let’s not forget how happy the winner is…

At Onbrand, we talk a lot about memorable experiences, happy customers and success stories… it just  makes us ‘so emotional baby’!

Looking for a unique competition idea? Get in touch on sayhello@onbrand.co.uk.

We’re ‘saving all our (creative) love for you…..’

 

 

 

Jan 31
0

Brewery Sleepout Case Study

By | Case Study, Events

How a unique event doubled fundraising targets and bought awareness to a very important cause…

Community goals

If you’re regular readers of our blog, you’ll know that we love to help our clients put on events and boy, last year we did a lot! You can read about those here.

However, one event that really pushed our skills and expertise was The Brewery Sleepout. The first of its kind in Essex and a great experience for us.

Here’s how it went down…

As a centre based very much on community values, Tom Stobbart Manager at The Brewery wanted to add something alongside the awesome Christmas, Easter and, well you get the picture, events. Mindful of the homeless issue in and around the borough and as a result of ties with local homeless shelter charity Hope4Havering, we worked with Tom and the team to brainstorm an event that would really make a difference.

The result? A sleepout in the centre’s carpark with centre management and retailers.

How we did it:

  • Arranged retailer meetings where, with help from Hope4Havering, explained why this was such an important event.
  • Set up Just Giving Page(s) to encourage donations
  • Created a succinct social media and web campaign including: Interviews with Kim Merry founder of Hope4Havering (link) and a press release (link)
  • Raised press awareness with press releases, securing coverage in the Romford Record as well as landing Tom an interview on Time FM.
  • Continuously engaged with Hope4Havering to ensure our messaging was spot on as well as spending time at The Brewery fundraising.

The results:

4 freezing cold OnBrand members – Yep we did it too!

Press coverage that added up to £450 raised a huge amount of awareness around homelessness and Hope4Havering.

And best of all… The event raised over £10,000! That’s double the £5000 we had planned!

Tom Stobbart, Centre Manager at The Brewery said: “Homelessness affects a huge amount of people in every single area and Romford is no different. As a community centre we wanted to ensure we made some noise around this topic and raise money. We turned to OnBrand who have put on most of our events, and together we coined the Brewery Sleepout.”

“I’m so proud of the money we raised and take my hat off to the OnBrand team who organised the whole thing from start to finish, as well as taking time away from their families to join in the event.”

Here’s to next year, creating a legacy and… new thermals!!

Sep 04
0
concierge at McArthur Glen

Creating an inspirational late night shopping event

By | Case Study, Events, PR, Shopping Centres

How roaming entertainment and random acts of kindness came together to create a night (and day) to remember at McArthur Glen Designer Outlet Store in Ashford.

The Dream

McArthur Glen wanted to stage something a little different for their latest late-night shopping event. Staying true to their brand, they asked us for an aspirational and inspirational event, with impactful entertainment which would stand out from the crowd, in more ways than one.

Our challenge was to find the right kind of top-class entertainment that had enough presence to be noticed among throngs of shoppers and lots of background noise, at the same time as creating a lasting impact for the visitors.

The budget was £7,500 – £8,000.

Our Remedy

Our solution to noticeable entertainment was to bring in a roaming band – Rome – who could entertain shoppers with lots of different performances, bringing the entertainment and the shopping experience together as one.

We also provided a team of six ‘brand ambassadors’ to meet and greet and offer random acts of kindness throughout the day and evening. Each ambassador had a £200 gift card to randomly treat shoppers with by offering to buy gifts for them. This delightful touch ended with visitors receiving their child’s first pair of shoes, or their family evening meal, completely free of charge.

Refreshed and Revived

Our ideas came together to create a truly innovative event. Our band delighted their audiences by delivering unique and imaginative entertainment. Songs were created to celebrate the event itself, with some Wagamama diners being serenaded with the chicken katsu song and even singing special requests in-store.

The uniformed brand ambassadors were a hit too. They were easy to spot and provided some excellent additional branding for the event.

Along with the standard discounts on the day, of up to 70% off designer brands, these lovely ladies made surprise purchases of anything from flip-flops to food. Their random acts of kindness were like dreams come true for the shoppers who have since responded with fantastic feedback on the event.

The morning after the night before

Altogether, the event lived up to the dream of something different, something aspirational and something that fitted with the high-end, high-quality McArthur Glen brand. To top it all off, we gained some amazing press coverage in Kent Live and Hello Ashford.

Aug 21
0
OnBrand running the Baytree's charity fundraiser

Charity fundraising for Great Ormond Street Hospital

By | Case Study, Events, Shopping Centres

OnBrand and Baytree Shopping Centre hold a truly great charity fundraising day for Great Ormond Street Hospital raising £1,360.

Great Idea

Our brief was to pull together a fun, colourful, exciting day with lots of entertainment and fundraising opportunities as well as raising the awareness of the charity. This day was part of an ongoing annual event in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH).

The budget for the event was £1,000.

Great Support

The idea of the event was to raise as much money as possible, with minimal spend. Therefore, we were delighted to get so many volunteers from in and around the Baytree Shopping Centre.

With a combination of this support and some great organisational skills from the OnBrand team, we pulled together a fun, inspiring charity event.

A Great Partnership

Nicholls Build are the building and maintenance contractors for Baytree and they offered up a team of four for a sponsored cycle. They each rode 125 miles (a great total of 500 miles) starting from the shopping centre on the morning of the event and passing Great Ormond Street Hospital.

OnBrand set up a fundraiser page, promoted the sponsored cycle on social media and on the Baytree website and produced banners and posters in the centre.

Nicholls Build also painted Baytree’s wooden train in GOSH colours and it was used as a focal point for other activities in the centre. Some prizes were donated by security provider MyTag.

OnBrand ran a simple colouring competition, encouraging children to post their entries through the train letterbox for a chance to win one of MyTag’s prizes – five £10 WHSmith vouchers. Our social media and local poster promotion meant this was a busy and popular activity on the day.

Another Baytree service provider, OCS, made a generous donation of two ATP Tennis Final tickets which enabled a raffle to be held. Baytree staff sold tickets for £2 during the week leading up to the event and then promotional staff took over on the day itself.

OnBrand coordinated the publicity for the raffle, with posts on social media and the website, local posters and centre radio announcements.

Great Excitement

At Onbrand, our aim was to generate excitement and a buzz around the event to encourage lots of visitors and lots of donations.

We organised a ‘special guest’ in the shape of a Lego Man who handed out balloons and lollies in the centre. Accompanied by promotional staff with collection buckets, he was a bit hit after a week-long social media campaign.

We also maximised fundraising by arranging for a face painter to be positioned near to the wooden train, a local choir group, The Big Sing, and children’s performing group, Razzamataz, to do charity performances and for lots of promotional staff to be available on the day to collect money and support the various activities.

A Great Outcome

We’re pleased to say that our efforts resulted in £1,360 being raised for such a great cause.

If you’re planning an event, get in touch and see how we can help.

Jul 01
0
One Great Day balloons

How we used our magic to host three events in four weeks…

By | Case Study, Events

We like to keep busy – it keeps us on our toes. And we’re pretty unflappable when it comes to planning shopping centre events. So, even when The Brewery asked us to come up with three events in four weeks to engage the community and create some fun for families, it was a wish come true – although our second wish may have been not to have such a tight deadline 😊

Building up the Brewery’s events

The Brewery hadn’t done an event for a while, so, it decided to create three in four weeks… what do they say about buses?

And three events called for special thinking.

We wanted to make sure that any event we did got the whole family involved. The Brewery has a great range of retailers and leisure facilities and it just so happened that one of the weekends we had down was the launch of the much-anticipated Aladdin film. As Vue Cinemas were situated in the centre, we thought this would be great tie in. GENIE-US right?

We decided to host a whole weekend of Aladdin themed workshops including genie mask making, lantern making and even hired an Aladdin stilt walker to welcome our film and Disney fans.

But the fun didn’t end there! No Siree…because the next weekend we had to do it all again. This time we decided to help build kids’ creativity and host a BRICKLIVE themed weekend. Featuring a brick pit, graffiti walls and tables, we helped (well, watched) as the professionals built character masks. Our account director even got in on the action, encouraging little ones to build a tower higher than her…

Did it work? Take a look at the video

One Great Charity Event

The Brewery has a strong charity ethos and works to ensure it supports these where it can. So, when June for One Great Day came about, they wanted to make sure they had a great event to support it. Roll up On-Brand! We worked with The Brewery to create a fun filled Saturday full of fun circus activities from a ringmaster hosting workshop offering rubber duck decorating, circus mask making and wooden spoon crafts. Oh, and let’s not forget the fairground stalls including ball in a bucket, feed the clown, ring on the bull and other retro fun to get involved in.

And the best bit about it? All proceeds went to children’s hospitals and health charities. Our ringmaster also had special ties to the hospital and told us after the event: ‘It was lovely to see all the children having a go at circus skills this weekend at The Brewery.

‘When I was employed as a Clown Doctor at Great Ormond Street, fun and games were so important to the children in their care, and I really enjoyed keeping up with their progress while teaching them new tricks.’

But he wasn’t the only one who had something to add… as they say, only the truth comes out of kids’ mouths so here’s some quotes from them 😊

“This is so much fun, I can’t wait to tell my friends about this at school!” Child, age 6.

“I’m going to keep practicing hula hooping!” Child, aged 7.

The results…

  • Great local PR thanks to articles from The Romford Recorder newspaper.
  • Awareness of the centre grew thanks to articles from mummy bloggers for all three events
  • We secured a newspaper photographer to come down to One Great Day as a result of our press release and contacts!
  • Successful year-on-year footfall growth, using the events to build the brand and its community ethics
  • Social media engagement grew as did reach and reactions
  • Dwell time increased as did kids’ happiness – we can’t really say more than that can we!
Apr 01
0
the grinch

Bigging up the Baytree Shopping Centre

By | Case Study, Events, PR

The big issue

As a community shopping centre, Baytree knew the importance of bringing festive cheer to their audience and keeping up an overall momentum. They wanted to show shoppers how much each and every one meant to them, so they turned to OnBrand for expert advice and creative ideas on how to delight shoppers with a festive activity that would get everyone talking.

The big idea

They approached us as their agency and told us what they’d like to see. We listened to the centre manager’s idea of handing out goodie bags and decided to take it to the next festive level. As they say, “think big”. And that’s definitely what we did. We used our knowledge of the demographic – families – and decided to bring in elves to do the job for us. We also went one step further, chugging in a giant train in a side unit, to really drive the excitement home. And that wasn’t all…

We also pulled in a colouring promotion for kids, opportunities to buy Christmas presents and performances by local dance troops to reinforce the community message. And, to top it off we secured a free extra act to go down to the centre…Everyone welcomed the Grinch who was a huge hit with the shoppers, Baytree and retailers.

The big applause

We promoted the event on social media, releasing bits of it on consecutive days to build the excitement. We also got in touch with the local papers, securing a double page spread from one and front page from another – this was a huge win for us and the client who had in the past struggled with local coverage.

On the fun side, the elves and the Grinch doubled up as great photo props and pictures were shared across social media. With smiles, fun and chocolates in bellies, the event was great for bringing in the community and having a local event that was spoken about months after. Just call us Santa ????