Arco is the UK market leader supplying safety and workwear products to a variety of sectors, through direct sales, online and a national chain of stores.  As part of a major relocation of its headquarters, Arco looked to move their store on Waverley Street to new premises at Hull’s Link 63 Industrial Park. As their flagship store, Arco wanted to make the move a cause for celebration and enlisted Harrison Carloss to help support promotional activity through an integrated campaign including media buying and creative. In addition to the opening, the old store looked to hold their own closing down sale in order to help with the store move and also ensure that customers were aware of the upcoming relocation.

The project posed a number of challenges. Arco needed to get the message out to as many customers as they could over the Christmas period, which is often a difficult time of year to get cut-through. Not only this, but they needed to get out multiple messages of the closing of the old store, the opening of the new and the varying levels of discount available over the offers period.

We used a multi-channel approach to media buying to ensure the highest amount of exposure. With the target audience being tradesmen, we targeted channels that would have the highest impact – opting for Radio, DOOH, Press Ads and Ad Vans, alongside more regular communication channels for Arco, such as Email, Social Media and POS. Due to time limitations, traditional OOH billboards were unavailable to us, and instead, we opted for DOOH which would allow us flexibility when it came to delivering artwork and enabling precise changes to messaging through the stages of discount. We also took a similar approach to Radio coverage of the opening, ensuring that there wasn’t any overlap creating outdated messaging.

We kept designs clean to avoid confusion with the messaging, keeping in mind the placement of the ad and who would likely be seeing it. For us, the worst-case scenario was a potential customer misinterpreting the message and expecting an offer which was no longer available – or worse, turning up at the wrong address!

The opening of the new store was a huge success, breaking records for takings taken in one store on one day. The opening day garnered a lot of local press attention – helped along by an appearance by Sky Sports presenter and former Arsenal player, Paul Merson.