Gough Bailey Wright had the privilege of delivering a marketing strategy for Solihull Borough Council during the 2022 Commonwealth Games, aimed to drive footfall to it’s hospitality sector, shopping centre and attraction venues. The brief required a creative solution to work cohesively with digital marketing, via paid display and social campaigns, as well as providing assets to use on the website.
Ongoing management required detailed reporting to be scheduled so performance could be communicated effectively and to provide a platform to capture outputs, including understanding the wider effectiveness of the campaigns.
The agency needed to deliver a full service, providing ongoing support for creative assets as well as technical insights to how the campaigns were performing through analytics.
Gough’s creative team delivered an eye catching creative idea which highlighted the hotels, attractions, restaurants and points of interest through a concise and simple message of “So Solihull”. This would form the back bone of the marketing activity, where the creative assets were adapted for digital channels, forming a consistent message and visual throughout the user journey.
During the course of the 5 month campaign, users to the Solihull website increased 450% with an engagement rate of over 70%. Web traffic from outlying areas, such as London and Edinburgh alone had increased by nearly 1000%, indicating a success in awareness to regional areas, not just local. With the success of the creative, the decision was made to move this to OOH advertising as well.
Overall, the 2022 Commonwealth Games were a huge success with over 5,000 athletes competing in more than 250 events. It has been the biggest sporting event hosted in the UK since the 2012 Olympics with £779 million invested and 1 million spectator tickets sold.
