In our latest blog, Client Services Director, Jenny Jones, shares our smart recommendations for New Cross Central and how we adapted their marketing during the COVID-19 outbreak.
We’d been preparing for months for our client Far East Consortium’s pop-up experience. This was to promote their new Manchester apartment building, New Cross Central, which was due to launch on the 19th March in the UK.
As the development is yet to be constructed, we recommended a pop-up launch to raise brand awareness, with a view to hosting a series of events throughout the year. We were due to hold the first event at La Collina, a great coffee shop in the Northern Quarter. The venue was perfect for our target market and worked into the whole feel of the brand. It was going to be an inviting, relaxed launch event.
Due to Coronavirus, our plans for a cosy pop-up experience had to be cancelled. However, rather than informing people who had signed up to the event it was postponed, we wanted to ensure those who had signed up still could experience the launch event – as it had generated a lot of interest. So, we created a ‘virtual tour’ of the New Cross Central marketing suite.
Virtual tour for New Cross Central
For our virtual tour, we created a number of different video assets for people who had expressed an interest in the event. Rather than hosting the event in the La Collina coffee shop, we relocated to Far East Consortium’s office in central Manchester. The office was set up with bespoke furniture and the marketing materials we had created, such as the apartment specification boards, New Cross Central brochure and tote bags to ensure this felt as close to a real marketing suite as possible.
The main video for the virtual launch was a tour of the marketing suite. The pace of the video is deliberately slow, focusing on aspects in the suite in great detail. This is to emulate the experience you would have in a real-life marketing suite, where you can take your time and look at everything in detail.
We ‘opened the doors’, launching the video on 19th March at 2pm. It was included in a promotional marketing email, which also linked to the New Cross Central website we produced and the brochure. The email was sent to everyone who had been invited to attend the original launch event, and for those who were interested in learning more about the scheme, they could email or call to discuss with New Cross Central’s agents.
The idea behind this is to encourage human interaction between our target audience and the company, as it was imperative to ensure people still had as much personal contact as possible and that they weren’t just left cold. The client then followed up any potential interest with the option of video calls.
Another video was created for social media content, which you can see below. This was a shorter, snappier version with the highlights from the virtual tour video. It was created to attract people who had not expressed an interest in the event yet and is going to be launched on New Cross Central’s Facebook and Instagram channels.
As a result of the virtual launch, over 100 calls booked with 80 units available. Once the social distancing measures are no longer in place, we will hold an in-person launch event where people can come and visit, speak to a member of the New Cross Central team, and learn more about the interior specification and help find their new home.
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