Background:

In 2022 the UK’s leading confectionery wholesaler Hancocks celebrated its 60th birthday. We’d been working with them for a year leading up to the anniversary, supporting their online offering for trade customers and its 14 depots dotted across the UK. 

Prior to our trade PR campaign and post-Covid, the company had seen a drop in footfall in store but had seen considerable growth in the e-commerce platform both for direct deliveries and click and collect. Like other businesses in the wholesale and retail sector, Hancocks faced restrictions on in-store shopping during lockdown which had a significant impact on the volume of customers visiting the depots.

The business celebrated its 60th birthday in 2022 with a series of planned events at its depots across the UK. Geographically, the stores span the UK with Glasgow being the furthest north and Bristol serving the south west corner of the country.

The challenge and the aim of the 60th birthday celebrations was threefold. It needed to drive customers back to store and encourage new and lapsed customers to find out more about the Hancocks confectionery offering, win media coverage around the 60th anniversary, and help Hancocks’ staff celebrate the birthday. The campaign was to run throughout the anniversary year.

Strategy:

The 60th anniversary year provided us with a strong news hook to run a successful store campaign but very few people knew they had one of the UK’s biggest sweetshops on their doorstep.

Each store had a scheduled 60th anniversary event. For each event there was separate PR activity aimed at trade publications and regional titles to reach those existing, lapsed and new customers.

When it came to trade press, each store had its own press release promoting the event, the deals on offer, what customers should expect and all the timings they needed. 

For the regional press, we took a different approach. We needed to find a way to get coverage in mainstream regional media for a business that’s only open to trade customers - and in a relatively niche sector. So, we reached out to key regional publications and business journalists inviting them to come and visit the largest sweetshop in their town or city.  

Over the years, the Hancocks team had archived information about the stores - we were able to take advantage of old images, original store photos and details on the openings of the depots. They had even archived original press clippings. We were able to provide all the details on that specific store - how long it had been in business, its history in the town, how many sweets are stocked and all the images and information from the archives.

Throughout, we worked hand in hand with the client and the team at each depot to ensure success and encourage lots of customers in store at each event. 

Results:

We kicked off the 12 month campaign with the first of fourteen 60th anniversary events at the Loughborough store, which is where the company began. With such a strong business story, the event and the birthday resulted in coverage on ITV Central with an interview with Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Summerley, coverage on BBC Radio Leicester and local newspapers including the Loughborough Echo. The event also appeared on the ITV News website.

We secured coverage in key regional titles for the stores including the Manchester Evening News, Sheffield Star, Glasgow Times, Watford Observer, Birmingham Live, Hull Live, Liverpool Echo, Telegraph & Argus and Lancashire Telegraph. The Hull depot even appeared on BBC Radio Humberside.

This campaign was all about brand awareness and encouraging customers back into the depots following the Covid pandemic. And of course marking the 60th anniversary of Hancocks. 

The planned PR activity combined with the marketing campaign implemented by the Hancocks marketing team resulted in footfall increasing throughout 2022 increased by 17%. New customer acquisitions also increased by 20%.

Client feedback:

Kathryn Hague, Head of Marketing at Hancocks’ parent company World of Sweets, said:

‍“PR has brought excitement and competition between our stores in terms of best local coverage and story - there has been a real desire to feature in media reports. The feel-good benefits for our team have been tremendous.

“Motive has been a true partner agency. They have driven results, challenged and introduced new approaches, been on hand to offer great counsel and ultimately exceeded the results we wanted. It has been a pleasure to work with the team and it is exciting to see what we will deliver in the future.”