Thistles Shopping Centre is a destination shopping centre situated in the heart of Stirling, with over 70 stores and big-name retail brands under one roof. With a blend of fashion, seasonal and event promotion campaigns throughout the year, advertising for Thistles is a big deal, building awareness throughout the year.
The summer school holidays have the second largest advertising focus of the year, with a themed event to attract local families and visitors to the area.
Families looking for entertainment for little ones and shopping for summer holiday clothes, as well as thinking about school uniform for the next year, brings in visitors in huge numbers. Once they have had some fun, they hit the shops and eateries – driving sales volumes up.
Our key objectives at this time are to generate awareness and interest to drive footfall, dwell-time in the centre and increase sales.
A rounded, multi-channel campaign was planned and deployed – designed to target local and wider audiences with compelling messaging across multiple touchpoints. This approach fundamentally builds awareness, and with every interaction, familiarity grows, the ads resonate more, and the likelihood of action/visits to centre grows.
We wanted to generate mass visibility for Thistles both on large, impactful, stand out formats and on smaller, more personal ones.
A blend of out of home media, print, and programmatic display and audio formed the campaign. Some formats ran for the whole summer, and were interspersed with the others to create peaks of heightened interest. Summer 2022 hosted the event ‘Around the World’; a miniature golf course, featuring landmarks from around the world.
“I have worked with Fusion for almost 6 years, and they continue to deliver the media we require to a high standard. The team know what works for us and what doesn’t and are always introducing new concepts for us to explore. They aim to meet our needs and provide a friendly but professional approach whilst always being flexible with any unexpected issues and requests we may have.”
CLAIRE BARRIE, RETAIL MARKETING MANAGER, THISTLES SHOPPING CENTRE
The holiday season was covered by a bus mega rear, carrying the summer event message ‘Around the World’ from the Bannockburn depot to Stirling and the surrounding towns and villages.
A ticket gateway takeover was posted for the whole season, delivering an average footfall of over 200k. Awareness raised by this format is unsurmountable as every passenger must pass through the gates.
As the season really got underway a burst of phone kiosk ads ran, situated in high footfall, high dwell time zones on the high street and around key locations. Out of home media was supported by programmatic display and audio ads, served on home hubs, DAB and mobile on Spotify, Deezer, Soundcloud, podcasts and local stations. These targeted the local family audience to create excitement for the miniature golf event with music and voice.
