| Queens Arcade partnerships |
While there is no doubt that Cardiff’s shoppers, shops and commentators are used to dealing with and indeed might be tired of hearing about the current difficult economic climate, local shopping centre Queens Arcade is creating innovative marketing partnerships to challenge current conditions and preconceptions. With the date for the opening of the redeveloped St David’s Centre city moving ever closer, Centre Management and their marketing team have created a series of partnerships outside the traditional retail sector that they believe will help create a memorable point of difference for the Centre and give customers an extra reason to continue shopping there. While the scheme is still in its infancy, the Management team has measured a significant increase in interest both inside the Centre itself and on the Centre’s newly revamped website where traffic has “exploded”, according to Centre Manager Nick Beckett. Indeed the Centre’s impressive 14m per annum footfall and new website provide huge audiences and therefore form key marketing communications platforms for the co-promotions. Add in bespoke radio creative for each event on Red Dragon fm generating over 1m impacts amongst their audience aged 15 years and over, plus dynamic visuals displayed on the Centre’s strategically positioned plasma screens and a seamless multi-platform campaign comes together. The Centre is currently marketing and publicising its newest promotion with local nightclub Oceana and Nick and his team believe that their strong social networking platform is starting to pay dividends amongst the Centre’s key target demographic, 18-35 year olds. The first promotion, publicising the Cardiff Blue’s first Magners League game of the season generated a 15% increase in traffic to the revamped Queens Arcade website and footfall figures show that 49,000 people came through Queens Arcade on the day of the promotion itself. The marketing team has also created a Facebook fan site for the Centre where the latest news and promotions can be rapidly and easily communicated to users, who have by their membership of the fan site already indicated their strong interest in and loyalty to the Centre. The addition of a supporting Facebook advertising campaign, highly focused and tightly targeted to a specific audience for each event, generated 336,530 impacts with people who live within a 50 mile radius of Cardiff, who are over 18 and who like rugby for the first co-promotion with the Cardiff Blues. The subsequent surprise donation of a pair of tickets to see U2 at the Millenium Stadium presented another ideal opportunity to communicate with the Fans who recommended their friends in a bid to win the tickets. In the face of expected growing competition from the soon to be completed extension of St Davids, the team is certain that such loyalty and word of mouth recommendation will be crucial to the continued success of the promotional partnerships and the shopping centre itself. Ceri Brockway, Marketing Manager for Queens Arcade says, “We are in no doubt about the challenge the reopening of the revamped St David’s will present to Queens Arcade. Indeed we are confident that Queens Arcade will enjoy an increase in shoppers visiting the Centre as they make their way to have a look at the work that has been carried out in St David’s. However it is up to us to provide these shoppers with promotions and offers to encourage them to return to Queens Arcade more frequently in the future. “We are delighted to have been able to confirm such exciting and creative partnerships across the City, including forthcoming events to celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness month in October with the Hard Rock Café and of course our Charity Fashion Show coming up in November at Oceana, in support of the George Thomas Hospice. We are confident that our shoppers will continue their loyalty to our shops and continue to enjoy exclusive bonus offers, especially once our new extended shopping hours are in force at the end of October.” The Centre is focused on the development of its strategy and building long-term partnerships across the City and Nick Beckett is excited by future projects and promotions planned with the Park Plaza, Laguna Health Spa, Cardiff Blues and other yet to be announced cultural and leisure partners. “We see this as a long term strategy, building creative partnerships across Cardiff and South Wales that benefit our loyal and sophisticated audience. We are looking forward to the challenges and opportunities provided by the opening of the extended St David’s centre and are confident that Queens Arcade is well placed to benefit from increased shoppers to Cardiff.” |