Summer campaigns full of colour

With the dark forces of Covid-19 well and truly part of everyday life, summer gave us the opportunity to make things look just that little bit brighter.

With the focus of our retail clients previously being on ‘shop safe’, our attention now fell onto a number of summer campaigns.

Still very conscious of safety for their customers, it was also important to accept the new normal and get back to business. Our summer campaigns became the perfect platform to engage with our audiences in a more positive and upbeat tone. To welcome them back and to remind them why they should visit.

The Boulevard in Northern Ireland was one of our clients that needed a new summer campaign. A centre that continues to buck the retail trend, the post lockdown opening was clearly a crucial time to welcome back shoppers and continue their success. We’d already established a strong and recognisable on-going fashion-based campaign in 2019. Something to appeal to the young stylish audience in and around Belfast. A shopping destination for the ‘cool cats’, our first campaign launched with - you guessed it - models with cat heads. The campaign was getting such positive feedback, it quickly expanded and introduced other animal heads including foxes and reindeer.

So what next for summer? Exotic birds seemed the perfect direction to fly with. Something even more upbeat and impactful. A distraction from challenging times and a moment to ‘enjoy the world in full colour’.

The birds represented a feeling of freedom and of stretching your wings as lockdown eased. A time to show off and display your style. Turn heads, stand out and ruffle a few feathers. Using bright, vibrant and uplifting colours, and supporting copy, it seemed the perfect creative to evoke that summer feeling whilst continuing to promote a safe shopping environment.. Rolling out across numerous digital, social, OOH and print assets, and supported onsite, the campaign has already had shoppers flocking back.

Looking across to mainland Europe, Docks Bruxsel in Belgium were also looking to get that post lockdown positive message across to their audience. Already open for business, the summer campaign focused on a ‘green’ event. With children’s workshops promoting recycling and looking after the environment to urban gardens and education on bees, it was the natural platform to promote the centres strong green credentials.

Having worked with Docks Bruxsel for a number of years, we’d already created a successful campaign based around ‘the world of Docks’. Creating an environment that has a 3D brand ‘D’ at the heart of it, each campaign enables us to promote numerous aspects of the centres reasons to visit. The perfect foundations to communicate all the various aspects of the summer event. From blues skies and wildflowers to beehives and bees, the hero image came alive with that colourful summer feeling. A lighthearted touch was added with a little twist to the ‘BeeGreen’ heading and supporting copy. As before, this was another campaign that rolled out across various applications with the approach being digital first. With flowers blooming and bees buzzing, animated elements bought more life to the creative and helped achieve wider audience interaction. It’s definitely good to BEE back!

Heading off to the wonderful city of Stockholm, the summer campaign for Bromma Blocks is another example which is full of colour. Having only recently created a new brand identity for them, we also created a new campaign platform that helped to promote this. Using the brand shapes to contain images, the look is bold and graphic. A solution to promote the campaign messaging, but also to help launch and reinforce the new identity. When it came to the summer campaign, clearly the world was in a very different place. Although in Sweden they decided against going into lockdown and shops stayed open, travel restrictions where in place so the focus became the staycation - a pastime the Swedes have enjoyed for generations, so something we could take advantage of. Plans may have been grounded for people, but that didn’t mean summer was cancelled.

With the main focus being on a family audience, we needed to promote and communicate what Bromma Blocks has to offer. From garden furniture to BBQ’s and fashion to sportswear, there’s a wide variety of retailers on site. Everything our audience could need for a memorable summer at home. With the hero image of two children playing on an inflatable, it shouted family summer fun in an instant. A colourful, sunny and playful look to resonate with our target audience. And anyway, when is an inflatable flamingo not a good idea?! Together with vibrant teals and pinks, the Miami vibe was classic summer. An uplifting campaign to cut through the noise and to promote Bromma Blocks as the go-to place for a family summer staycation.

With Autumn campaigns already falling on our plate, we’re off to work our BWP magic on the next round of creative campaigns.