Style Birmingham Live 2010

  • Organised by Retail Birmingham, Style Birmingham Live is a three-day fashion and beauty event that takes place at key retail venues across Birmingham’s city centre.
  • From 24-26 September, the city hosted a range of fashion and beauty events including a Catwalk Show hosted by George Lamb in the Town Hall, ‘The Show’ at the Bullring, a catwalk display at Pavilions hosted by Ruth Crilly. There were also a series of in-store events at Harvey Nichols, House of Fraser, and Selfridges.
  • Rewired PR is the retained agency for Retail Birmingham and was instructed to carry out the PR campaign from the launch of Style Birmingham Live, as well as during and post-event.   
  • The brief was to generate coverage in local, regional, national, online and broadcast press.
  • Our main objectives were to: Generate ticket sales, generate press coverage, raise profile of the event line-up, hold a press launch, manage requirements of partners
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  • Through our continued work with Retail Birmingham we are already well-briefed on the work of the organisation and the messages that it wants to promote.  We also already have existing relationships with the main target press, but did compile an additional press list to include those contacts more specifically interested in live fashion events.
  • We put together a detailed PR activity timeline; covering all activity in the lead up to the event. This enabled us to ensure that all key messages were being pushed and that we were promoting the individual elements of the event.
  • We held a number of events in the lead up to Style Birmingham Live, including a press launch with George Lamb held in the city centre, which attracted a lot of press attention; promotional activity in Brindleyplace and events at participating retailers.
  • In addition to this, we handled all press activity, including sending press releases, selling-in features, securing competitions, and planning interviews and photo calls prior to and during the event.
  • We also handled the Style Birmingham Live Twitter and Facebook accounts.
  • Communication was a key factor to the success of the campaign and Rewired PR was in daily contact with Retail Birmingham. We also circulated weekly update emails, detailing activity carried out for the week, coverage agreed and achieved, as well as key activity for the following week.
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  • Style Birmingham Live attracted over 7,000 visitors to the main show; and increased footfall to Birmingham’s two main shopping streets (New St. and Corporation St.) by 20%.
  • The PR campaign achieved over 156 pieces of coverage:
  • National Monthly/Weekly Magazines        3
    National News Online                3
    Local and Regional Newspapers            77
    Regional News Online                4
    Regional Lifestyle Magazines            11
    Regional TV and Radio                12
    Fashion, Lifestyle and Culture Websites        46
  • Coverage included listings in Stylist magazine, the Daily Mirror’s 3am website and a number of interviews with host George Lamb in various publications. We also secured an extensive feature on ITV Central Tonight and a high number of regional articles, which was our main target in order to increase ticket sales.
  • The total advertising value equivalent of the Style Birmingham Live campaign was over £1.3 million.
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