On the main drag, there's a thundering Primark and the grocers, much like anywhere else, are doing their value-thing on the edge of town.
No surprise then that Churchill Square, the city's predominant mall, has been feeling a little unloved.
The position at Chrurchill Square goes right to the heart of the problem created during the gravy-train years; architects and landlords were more than keen to fill vacant holes with concrete and glass and still, the tills jingled away as if the music would never stop. But it did.
Cheap and easy credit (free money, anyone?) only served to mask the inevitable - that unless customers are presented with a real reason to sample then they will not break the cycle of familiarity. As we all know, familiarity actually breeds content, And that was never truer than in retail.
Give the client team their due. The incomparable Sam and Lucy spotted the situation as soon as they inherited it and set about restructuring the very idea of how they communicate with customers. That's where we came in.
We conducted a wholesale audit of the asset, the numbers and the existing customer and realised pretty swiftly that the problem was not the product but the fact that the customer had lost all belief. The website was doing 500 page views per month, TV money was yielding nothing and even the face painting clowns didn't really have their heart in it.
So, we rebuilt the proposition for the ground up. We courted aspiring local models with the lure of a contract with Kate Moss' agency Storm, we galvanised the retailers into developing co-ordinated promotions and we refocussed the budget into areas where it might stand half a chance of actually connecting with our target audience. Web, social, press, posters, POS. And, the client team had the guts to let us commission photographer Mark Seager to bring it all to life.
Brighton Fashion Week was born. Bria and Saul were discovered and launched on their way to earning far more money than us. The press went in to a front-page frenzy. All the assets for a full year's seasonal online and offline campaigns fell out of it at no extra cost. Guess what happened to sales...
This is what happens to profits, morale and long-term goodwill when Grain become involved. Hard-headed commercial decisions are resolved with insight, creativity and purpose. Interested? Click here.
