The Plaza Celebrates the Power of Embracing Diversity and Lifestyle-Focused Perspectives in Summer Campaign Ad from Rocksteady Digital
Rocksteady unlocks the true potential of data with data-driven marketing to make better decisions and have the best formula to effectively take The Plaza Shopping Centre’s digital strategy across online users to be able to create, interact, collaborate and share content, in text, images, and video, and ultimately maximise ROI in both time and money.
‘By Your Side’ – …For Every Lifestyle. For Every Moment.
The Plaza Shopping Centre
Digital marketing and technology have always been key aspects of The Plaza’s philosophy for success, and with the impact of COVID, implementing data-led and smart marketing has never been more critical to success in the industry. In collaboration with Rocksteady Digital Agency, the shopping centre has introduced a new diversity and lifestyle-focused campaign, titled – ‘…For every lifestyle. For every moment.’ – to debut the spring/summer season of 2022 in Malta, promoting the best brands under one roof.
This forms a part of The Plaza’s constant commitment to deliver a top-level consumer and client experience, as well as a drive to constantly boost the footfall in individual outlets when visiting the shopping mall.
There is no doubt today that a strong web presence is an essential part of every communications campaign. Through extensive industry research, competitor analysis, internal knowledge, and in collaboration with award-winning digital marketing agency, The Plaza was able to launch a 70-second film, titled – ‘By Your Side’, that invites people to witness shared moments brought to life with one ever-expansive journey, made up of many unique lifestyles.
The design, development, and execution of a bespoke strategy and digital marketing campaign would compete with Malta’s already booming consumer market, building upon its sound heritage as Malta’s first shopping mall which opened in 1993 and is still welcoming people today.
Executing the appropriate digital strategy to maximise our audience reach, by means of video production, PR, digital media and perfectly crafted creative content.
A well-thought-out strategy is crucial to the success of any project and ensures that the business objectives are met. We executed strategy through market research, big data, and business intelligence by creating a unique user-centric customer journey. From ideation to delivery, we fostered CX and digital transformation by producing designer-quality customer journey maps and personas, to deliver insights that matter to the business.
“The idea was to make the most out of The Plaza’s video campaign ‘…For every lifestyle. For every moment.’ and direct the audience to a dedicated landing page on The Plaza’s website.” – Alan Cini, Managing Director at Rocksteady.
Landing pages are an essential aspect of any marketing campaign. They target qualified leads, deliver pertinent product details, and capture valuable contact information. ‘Shop The Look’ features the full 70-second film, in a seamless, five-scene movie, we travel through different personalities and lifestyles, that The Plaza welcomes to unlock a borderless world. We showcase the routines that come when people from different walks of life gather outside the shopping centre to share, converse, and ultimately build moments in their life.
Every piece of content that we create is linked to our strategic goals
This has been accomplished through consistent and targeted, organic and paid marketing, the launch of various video splits promoting the five individual scenes, and a skillful mixture of visual elements and imagery underlining items from relevant fashion brands, retail stores, food outlets, and training hub, all found inside The Plaza and collaborating on the campaign.
“We use creativity and computer-aided design to support in the creation, modification, analysis, and optimisation of visuals associated with digital media during the lifecycle of the campaign.”
The film was directed by Alan Cini. Click the link to watch behind-the-scenes content of our Summer Ad.
The Making-of ‘By Your Side’ – Five locations, three days.
Behind the scenes
We can now tell a more immersive story by combining images and videos
The plan is to roll out a strategic marketing campaign over social media via a series of five (5) split videos and creatives. We executed a digital campaign crafted by means of multimedia creatives and graphic assets in all social media formats.
Discovery and planning
We utilised effective process-driven achievements to support all the strategic objectives through comprehensive research and analysis. We needed to ensure that our strategic expectations were realistic and viable before moving into action and therefore we set off with an exhaustive discovery and planning phase. During this, we assessed the existing surveillance system to determine The Plaza’s footfall along with genders groups, as well as, websites usage and server logs, google analytics, user traffic, audiences, demographics, search console, and heatmaps to gain quantitative insight into “what works and what does not”.
Next up we focused on gaining an in-depth perspective of “what people want and expect” as part of our qualitative analysis. We assessed the findings from curated “mind-maps” and “feature wish lists” by inviting and interviewing local shoppers and popular influencers. We conducted several discovery meetings and formed The Plaza Marketing Committee, made up of industry specialists to analyse competitor campaigns, websites, market trends, and web design trends. We tested, iterated, and improved our campaign to consistently increase results and cost efficiency.
While designing The Plaza campaign, we wanted to create something that clearly represents the shopping centre’s purpose, methods, and values. This exhibits the expansion of self through the continued pursuit of perspectives and encourages our audience to invite new ideas, beliefs, and stories into their life.
Development and execution
We embarked on interactive media, such as carousels, stories, polls and many other ways to increase follower growth, creating positive sentiment, and content followers can relate to.
As our target audience is scrolling on their social platforms, we only have a few seconds to grab—or lose—their attention. Each scene was extracted from the main video and curated into 15-second short clips.
We identified what topics to produce and what content users engage with and respond to. The aim of the campaign implementation and execution is to deliver a more engaging and relevant experience to The Plaza visitors and recipients through better content.
We have formulated standards and guidelines that reflect the brand
The brand promise has always been communicated across the board and held at the centre of every marketing initiative. The full measure of our campaign has been built not only through interaction with consumers but incrementally, ad by ad, channel by channel, and platform by platform. Each element of communication reinforces what our campaign represents.
We are storytellers!
To keep our campaign enticing and encourage user engagement, each post serves to tell micro-stories, so we combine visually exciting video splits and imagery with equally impactful captions. We use a distinct visual style and consistent filters. We make use of the full range of Instagram products, such as Stories, and IGTV which are all calling out for engaging video content!
We choose the right hashtags and make use of best practices that suggest seven or fewer hashtags are the best approach, otherwise, posts look cluttered and spammy. A fair combination of appropriate emojis helps express our message clearly while adding an element of creativity to our interactions.
We partner with people from the real world!
Influence tie-ins on Instagram have proved successful and should be considered, however instead of partnering with locally known faces or influencers to take part in the video production, a collaboration with well-researched individuals and shoppers from the real world added genuine authenticity.
From those who have lived long enough to know and uniquely recognise the power of somebody else’s story – to those who are now on the rise. This new film introduces our audience to the different viewpoints of people, customs, beliefs, and overall atmosphere when you step outside The Plaza Shopping Centre, and, quite simply knowing – they are always by your side.
The Plaza Shopping Complex
Malta’s first shopping mall opened in 1993 and is still welcoming people today. The Plaza boasts a range of retail outlets, eateries, and more spread over four floors. The Plaza was the first local “one-stop shopping” experience in Malta. Now a staple in the heart of Sliema’s shopping district – an exceptionally vibrant and sought-after area, delightfully positioned next to the sea.
