Skopes
Fantastic tailors an immaculate store launch for Skopes Menswear
When planning the launch of a new flagship store in its home city of Leeds, there was only one agency that Skopes Menswear wanted to turn to.
Building on a longstanding twenty-year partnership, the menswear company tasked Fantastic with creating an event and promotional campaign surrounding the store’s launch, with the aim of raising brand awareness and driving footfall.
The Brief.
After a successful string of 19 store openings across the country, heritage menswear firm Skopes wanted a prominent campaign and launch event for the opening of their flagship store at White Rose Centre in Leeds.
The brief was to bring awareness to Skopes’ legacy as a Leeds-based brand, and drive both online and in-store sales through multiple marketing channels and promotional tactics.
We devised a launch strategy based around the core theme of ‘Born and Bred in Leeds’ which encompassed a wide range of above the line and below the line marketing tactics to achieve our objectives.
The Planning.
Our comprehensive ‘Born and Bred in Leeds’ campaign covered activity leading up to the store’s launch, as well as on the day of the event itself.
The promotional campaign included digital, print, and OOH advertising, to raise awareness of the new store and drive foot traffic, whilst also directing potential customers to the Skopes website to increase online sales.
Radio, door-drop campaigns, email marketing and written advertorial content were all utilised, with a focus on specific drivetimes in the local area, targeting those living in the vicinity of White Rose.
Numerous consumer competitions were launched in the build-up to the event, with winners of the competitions invited to attend on launch day to collect their menswear clothing prizes.
Our media relations campaign targeted trade, local and regional lifestyle and business media and involved the creation of pre and post-launch media releases as well as wider editorial content. An interview with founder Simon Skopes was secured with the Yorkshire Post magazine resulting in a two-page spread.
Local suppliers were used where possible to support the event, from the food to music to decorations and goody bags, tying into the brand’s Leeds heritage.
The Big Day.
The launch event on the Saturday morning saw a big crowd outside the store for the ribbon cutting ceremony, with friend of Skopes, former professional rugby player and MND campaigner, Kevin Sinfield, present to join in with the celebrations. He was joined by former Leeds United captain Ross McCormack, and other Leeds United legends Ben Parker, Andy Couzens, Noel Whelan.
The opening event included live entertainment from Leeds singer-songwriter Kuill and Britain’s Got Talent magician Luke Lenihan. For the ribbon cutting, Fantastic gifted Skopes with a pair of luxury scissors from 12th generation scissor-making brand and fellow Fantastic client Whiteley.
As well as helping to organise suppliers and the coordination of influencers and media on the day, our creative team captured photo and video content throughout the launch event to support PR and digital marketing activity.
The Results.
The store launch campaign surpassed expectations, garnering attention across online and traditional media, influencer outreach and organic social media as well as driving further brand awareness through OOH advertising, digital and email marketing.
Over 1.5million impressions were generated from the OOH advertising, while email activity resulted in impressive open rates. Our paid social campaign across Instagram and Facebook achieved a reach of 900,000, which drove virtual and in person footfall.
The PR efforts culminated in nearly 740,000 people seeing the editorial content with 35 pieces of coverage, which had a combined 456 social engagements and nearly 24,000 coverage views. This also resulted in a huge boost in organic search traffic to the e-commerce store, as well as an increase in position 1 to 3 rankings on the website post-launch.
Google rankings increased to position one for three key phrases post launch, indicating that our media coverage and backlinks secured had a big impact on SEO.
The uplift in web sales helped the omnichannel approach, combining in-store and online experiences to ensure a seamless shopping experience for customers across all channels.
Sales on opening day exceeded Skopes’ expectations and targets, and White Rose remains one of their top performing stores.
View Gallery“I was really proud to celebrate the opening of our flagship Leeds store with a brilliant event which reflected on our heritage as a legacy Yorkshire brand.
“From the conceptualisation of the idea, to the delivery of the store launch event itself, Fantastic coordinated everything brilliantly, and we saw a noticeable uptick in people visiting our online store as a result of all the activity surrounding the event.”
Simon Cope, CEO of Skopes
