the challenge
Make the opening of Sephora, at Cardiff’s St David’s shopping centre, the most talked-about UK opening to date for a FTSE 100 client.
This needed to be a sustained campaign across social, web and email with a clear lead-up and teaser stage, followed by on-the-day coverage and transitioning to follow-up content. An emphasis on local influence also needed to be seamlessly woven in.
the campaign
Our campaign launched weeks ahead of the opening, with social, web features and teaser emails. From Welsh-language captions to love spoon content, we ensured every detail reflected the local community.
Timed content drops and a dedicated website hub built anticipation right up to opening. The hub itself drew an incredible 28k visits (26% of all web traffic during the period).
At 6:30am on the day of opening, our team of seven content creators were on site capturing every single moment: from interviews with first-in-line shoppers to live entertainment and chaotic (but fun!) giveaways. Content was turned around quickly and shared with the hungry social audience. Our community management team was also poised ready with speedy replies to comments and UGC sharing.
the results
The Sephora opening achieved a combined organic social reach of 3.4M, with a 7.67% engagement rate across channels. The activity also brought in lasting value to social channels with 4,246 new TikTok followers and 1,100 new Instagram followers.
However, momentum didn’t stop at the ribbon cutting. The email competition we launched attracted 12.9k entrants, half of them new to the database, adding a whopping 6.5k new members. Targeted email sends (470k total) achieved an impressive 47% open rate, surpassing yearly averages.
And we’re still going…Dedicated Sprout Social listening topics continue to track the conversation post-launch, and we’re taking all our learnings into the next Sephora launch (this time at Westgate Oxford), refining and repeating and honing that local voice.