Fashion in the City 2016

Plymouth is a city of huge potential. City Centre Manager, Jon Walton, instigated Fashion in the City as part of an ambitious strategy to drive footfall, sales and retailer engagement.

Previously attempted fashion events in Plymouth had struggled to gain traction and FITC needed to raise the bar in terms of city centre events.

Working alongside a talented graduate from Plymouth College of Art, we pitched three concepts – Expression, Identity and Lifestyle, all aimed at capturing the essence of how the people of Plymouth and surrounding areas might identify with fashion.

The concept of Identity was commissioned and we built the creative around a set of hero images of abstract faces built from clothing and accessories from the retailers within Drake Circus, Plymouth's popular shopping centre, and complemented with bold strap line of 'Make Plymouth Your Catwalk'.

The campaign was rolled out across multiple channels: we created applications such as printed posters, social media and video campaign graphics, digital displays within the city, a luxurious foil-blocked 24pp lookbook (serving as a programme of events) and even an 8m wide banner on the back of the huge Plymouth 'big screen'.

The events were kicked off in style at a VIP launch in Flannels, and concluded with two days' catwalk shows in Drake Circus, with the week filled with Fashion Afternoon Teas, models 'in the wild', beauty treatments on a travelling 'Beauty Bus' and multiple-location photography exhibitions.

The post campaign recall of the creative and the main proposition stood at over 50% and all objectives of increased sales, positive perception and retailer engagement were delivered.