Colchester Borough Council
Updating Colchester
Client
Colchester Borough Council
Year
2021
Here’s how we created a multiple touchpoint public awareness campaign to promote Colchester Borough Council’s range of capital works projects:
OBJECTIVE
Aphra won a tender to create an awareness campaign for Colchester Borough Council (CBC) to highlight the wide range of capital development projects taking place in Colchester. The brief included CBC’s desire to reach a wide audience and encourage public engagement without resembling a consultation process.
Our aim was to deliver an accessible campaign with multiple touch points beyond what would be achievable with CBC’s in-house team, but that could be adopted internally to continue the evolving campaign projects.
STRATEGY
Aphra carried out a consultation workshop and clearly identified the need to have physical assets present in the town during the campaign in order to maximise reach. We also wanted to push the client to consider creative solutions, beyond their typical campaigns which opened up a conversation about podcasts, live billboards, popup artwork and an accompanying art trail walk.
CBC have not used an agency for some time. We knew that in order to showcase Aphra’s value we had to demonstrate how collaborating with us could offer both an extension to the skills of their existing in-house team, and an opportunity to think strategically, access specialist expertise, and produce ‘first of their kind’ deliverables for CBC.
Coordination of multiple stakeholders, including a change in council and seasonal challenges made for imaginative and reactive plans.
EXECUTION
Updating Colchester featured a blend of online awareness building and in-person engagement activities. The campaign launched with a dedicated web page listing the featured capital works projects, and an in-person, animated “living billboard” Q&A event with the head of the Council taking questions from the public outside a local landmark. The event was filmed and its reach amplified through social media and PR.
Managing the full campaign cycle, we collaborated with a number of partners to deliver an in person and digital campaign which included, both paid and organic social media posts, an interactive street-based conversation app, podcasts, press activity, newsletters, web content and photography.
Campaign activity culminated in a unique popup art activity where local and international street artists, as well as a local school, were invited to create temporary, site responsive artworks for some of the key capital works projects. The artwork received press attention and public engagement was amplified through social media activity. A downloadable trail map was made available to the public, creating a temporary art trail through the town encouraging people to visit each site and learn more about the investment in the area.
IMPACT
Highlighted awareness of 9 key project sites including completed spaces and in development construction sites
115K social media impressions , 1.8K engagements and 52.5K reach
912 clicks from social to the website with 1000+ unique website visits in total
X5 local press articles
Branded campaign assets for continued use
“By working with We Are Aphra, we have been able to extend our marketing activity and support our organic and paid for reach on social media. The We Are Aphra team has always been supportive and on hand to provide advice, which has delivered successful results.
At the heart of the Updating Colchester campaign were creative, original engagement activities, and excellent videos for the Make Your Day campaign, both have been vital to engage key audiences and meet objectives.”