We've Missed You

Re-opening the high street safely

Arch Creative won a pitch for Leicester City Council to create a campaign reopening the high streets safely during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the creative campaign needed to take a phased approach, communicating the reopening of different business sectors in the city centre and neighbourhoods following the end of Covid lockdown restrictions.

Leicester was the only place in the UK to be placed into lockdown in June 2020 and received negative media coverage which had a detrimental impact on the city’s reputation at the time. Leicester City Council needed an inspiring and empowering campaign to try and change some of these perceptions.

Creative Concept

The creative concept we’ve developed was called ‘We’ve missed you’.

The aim was to remind people what they have been missing during lockdown; meeting a friend for coffee, going shopping with family/friends and going to the cinema or theatre etc – when we were allowed to do so. An equally important message was to build visitor confidence and reassure people that it was safe to go out and engage in a range of experiences, and as an aide mémoire to act responsibly and stay safe.

Our campaign creative revolved around an emotive poetry based video, and the supporting campaign graphics complement the video with a range of vibrant illustrations and messages which will inspire and engage our range of target audiences.

Our Strategy

Our strategy followed a simple omnichannel approach, providing the most effective campaign and the best use of budget:

1) Match the phased reopening plan
2) Deliver a range of ad executions across the best media channels to target the diverse audience types, split into the following groups:

Residents – existing and prospective residents
Students from the city’s universities, FE colleges and schools
City office workers who support the local businesses
Businesses – existing businesses and entrepreneurs
Workforce – supporting and advising of safe working arrangements

Targeted creative for each audience

We’re produced a range of creative which targeted the individual audience types and coincided with the phased re-openings:

The core messaging was based around amplifying the poem video
We used individual creative executions tailored for each of the neighbourhoods
We used sector specific creative to coincide with the reopening roadmap

Audience & Media Plan

To successfully deliver the campaign, we ran a full research piece to understand more about the varied audiences in Leicester, their interests and media preferences so that we could best reach them with the brand message.

The media plan we developed cover the following areas: