Through Autumn 2023, and working with FORCardiff, (the business improvement district for Wales' capital,) I was responsible for the concept and creative in support of City of Arcades Day, an annual celebration of Cardiff's historic and colourful shopping arcades.
The initial brief was to create a way of promoting and raising the profile of City of Arcades Day, driving footfall into the arcades themselves and to generate positive press coverage around all of the events and offerings of the day.
After some research and development time, I decided on the idea of a city-wide board game. The arcades themselves reminded me of the sections of a Monopoly board, breaking Cardiff up into different areas rich with history and excellent shopping! Initial scamps were drawn up around the idea and, once presented to and signed off by the client, some time was spent looking at the scope of the event and what would be the most effective way of executing it.
An example of the OOH advertising promoting City of Arcades Day
The promotional aspect came first - how would we raise awareness of the event across South Wales and drive people to visit Cardiff on the weekend of the event? A short OOH and social media campaign followed, utilising some of the most prominent D6, D48 and bus stop sites in and around Cardiff and Newport city centres to set the visual style for the event and drive buzz.
We continued this with media choices in Cardiff Central and Newport train stations, (floor vinyls and ticket gate wraps,) and themed 'game tile' floor vinyls in key locations around Cardiff promoting the event.
D6 promoting City of Arcades Day
Bus D6 promoting City of Arcades Day
We created a set of 'Game Tile' floor vinyls and placed them at key locations in Cardiff to promote the event.
Promotional floor vinyl for the event.
Branded ticket gates at Cardiff Central train station
To engage influencers and strengthen our social media promotion of the event, we also created a real, playable City of Arcades Day board game! This was entirely designed in-house and a total of 30 were produced to send to press, influencers and to offer as prizes during City of Arcades Day.
The crowning element of the whole campaign was the giant, 'life size' version of City Of Arcades Day - The Game that we installed outside Cardiff Central train station for the weekend of the event. We created a set of rules for the game that allowed members of the public to roll giant dice and compete for prizes, which had been collected from vendors across the shopping arcades in the city. These were supplemented by standard-size copies of the City of Arcades Day board game. Wynne Evans was our compere for the launch event, with a fantastic group of actors utilising prop playing pieces to engage with and manage players throughout the weekend. Over 150 people played in total, with universally positive feedback and some really fun interactions!
The event was a huge success, with a big increase in footfall throughout the whole of the city centre. Feedback from the public was incredibly positive, with many commenting that they hoped the game would be back in 2024!