Visit Plymouth
Ambition:
Rediscovering shopping! A social media challenge during the coronavirus crisis.
Social media content is a powerful marketing asset for destination tourism. It’s also a fantastic way to collect user-generated content, gain more followers, and keep in touch with those who visit your location. Crucially social media is utilised to engage people more personally and authentically.
Harissa PR worked with Visit Plymouth to devise and coordinate impactful Instagram campaigns to encourage people to shop locally, support the high street, and return to safe shopping in the city during the coronavirus crisis.
The Instagram campaigns aimed to highlight the city's impressive breadth of independent retailers, offering unique products and excellent customer service. KPIs included increasing the number of followers for the Shop 4 Plymouth social media, increasing website hits, and encouraging behaviour change by asking people to visit shops and support their local high street and independent shops.
Action:
Think beyond just “Shop Local” and digitally engage people by transforming shopping into an authentic experience.
Visit Plymouth wanted to embrace social media to attract and inspire tourists and local visitors back into the shopping hubs of Plymouth city centre and waterfront areas.
Harissa PR was commissioned on three campaigns between 2020-2023 to engage several select Instagram content creators and influencers that could create a series of Instagram stories, reels, and grid images to promote Plymouth as a desirable and exciting shopping experience destination.
Harissa PR researched, briefed, and contracted specific content creators and worked closely with them to plan, sign off, schedule, deliver content and arrange access to experiences and businesses. We evaluated their style, audience demographics and engagement metrics to ensure that the influencer ‘fit’ was suitable for both Visit Plymouth and the content creator.
All content creators had an existing community of online followers and an authentic voice that inspired trust. Each influencer worked with Harissa PR to produce brand-safe content that spoke to their current audience and would reach and engage new followers whilst maximising promotional opportunities for Visit Plymouth.
Each Instagram story, reel or grid post was posted on the influencer’s account and shared across Shop 4 Plymouth and Visit Plymouth channels. The content featured influencer shopping, visiting shops and businesses, and having seasonal experiences in Plymouth in the city centre or along the waterfront, highlighting brilliant products or customer service. The content creators also created great captures of the city and its landmarks and utilised key hashtags as directed.
Result:
Enriched social media presence and increased marketing opportunities for Plymouth retail and hospitality businesses.
The Influencer shopping experience Instagram campaigns were a very successful way of turning around authentic content quickly and cost-effectively. The reach and engagement levels were impressive, and the number of shares and comments strongly indicated that the content was reaching desirable audiences and achieving a solid brand uplift for Visit Plymouth’s shopping campaigns.
Through the selection of handpicked content creators and a clear strategic campaign, Harissa PR was able to aid Visit Plymouth in reaching aligned and targeted audiences. We expanded the Instagram campaign across several of the influencer’s social media platforms for extra value, which increased audience engagement and reach. This included successfully sharing repointed content via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and websites. Hashtag aggregates were also impressive, and original user content saw an upsurge using the Visit Plymouth campaign hashtags.
The Instagram campaigns enriched Visit Plymouth’s social media presence and highlighted the City and Waterfronts’ offer of exciting and accessible high street and independent shopping experiences.