Following the devastating impact COVID19 restrictions had on high streets across the country forcing many non-essential retailers to go into hibernation, Vale of Glamorgan Council wanted to show its support for high street traders in its four towns as restrictions started to ease.
Objectives
- Develop a campaign to encourage local residents to support their high streets and shop local
- Through the campaign increase business confidence amongst traders for the year ahead
Strategy
We developed a campaign concept –‘Shop Vale of Glamorgan, Shop Safe’ with an overarching message ‘Their survival depends on your support’. The strategy focussed on using the local traders themselves to plea to residents to shop locally. We built a narrative and messaging around why it was important for residents to support their local high street and also the measures shops and the council were implementing to ensure it was safe to do so. While we had our overarching concept and identity, we tailored it to be town specific so that each town could own the campaign amongst their local residents. We knew the success of the campaign depended on the engagement of chamber of traders and local traders, who would push it out via their own channels to local and loyal supporters, so we created a campaign toolkit packed with assets for them to use. While we knew that visual social media content was going to be key to reaching residents at home and encouraging them to visit their local high street, once they visited, we wanted to give them something tangible that reinforced the safety message, encouraged them to keep coming back and gave us a means of ensuring the campaign was visible on the high street. We got the individual town’s campaign identity printed on window stickers and reusable canvas shopping bags. We also got branded hand sanitisers created with the campaign identity on them and developed a partnership with zero-plastic shops on each of the high streets where these could be refilled.
