The Background
Fenwick is Colchester’s flagship luxury store located on the historic High Street and is a focal point for shoppers in the town centre. Each year, Fenwick Colchester delivers a festive event during the annual Christmas Light Switch-On to mark the start of the festive shopping season.
The Challenge
The client wanted KAT Marketing to create a visual festive spectacular and promotional event to mark the start of Christmas in town for all shoppers to enjoy and drive positive press coverage. The team at the luxury store also required a community-based project to run alongside the event to leave a lasting legacy for the town that residents would remember fondly for many years to come.
The Solution
Festive Showcase – Fenwick were looking to give visitors to their Festive Showcase an awe-inspiring visual feast around Colchester’s Christmas Light Switch-On. Renovations to the luxury store had led to a large glass-fronted entrance which we decided to use as a platform to display a cinema-style production to onlookers via the technique of project mapping. To deliver the visual centrepiece required, the KAT team chose to design a magical 5-minute VT, which included a skit from the local pantomime (Snow White) and featured a virtual dove taking onlookers on a wonderful festive tour around Colchester as it was projection-mapped onto the store’s frontage.
Christmas Community Project – The KAT team decided to create a sculpture project around bespoke Christmas carousel horses. Firstly, we enlisted the support of local schools to design and decorate their very own carousel horse, with sculptures supplied by Fenwick. We organised delivery of the carousel horses and allowed the children at each school to get their artistic juices flowing and paint the horses as they wished. Each horse was beautifully painted by the pupils before taking up residence within the luxury store throughout the festive season. The best four even rode into town through crowds alongside Santa on his float during the festive showcase.
The Results
The KAT team secured a comprehensive media partnership with the local press which saw constant coverage of Fenwick’s Festive Showcase and Christmas Community Project in key publications. This led to a large crowd heading to town to see Santa arrive on his festive float alongside a selection of the carousel horses before switching on the town’s Christmas lights. The Christmas Community Project galvanised the children across the nine chosen schools to show off their artistic flair. Each horse caused a stir with shoppers coming from far and wide to view the artwork throughout the Christmas period and led to many offers being made to buy them from Fenwick. KAT chose to sell on the horses for charity, first giving each school the opportunity to buy theirs back. The auction secured £2,000 which was donated to local charity, St Helena’s Hospice, leaving an enduring legacy for the project.
The success of the campaign led to KAT Marketing being commissioned for further projects stretching into the following year and beyond.
Testimonial
“KAT Marketing has been first class in handling the diverse range of projects we have given them. Their event management and PR support has been of the highest standard; from co-ordinating, planning and managing our festive showcase to making sure the event was publicised positively in the local press, they have been terrific. Since taking them on we have embarked on further projects and are looking forward to working with KAT Marketing on campaigns in the near future.”
- Carl Milton, Managing Director of Fenwick Colchester
