As Birmingham’s premier shopping and lifestyle location, The Mailbox is the ultimate destination for designer shopping in the Midlands, offering international brands as well as chic salons, spas and restaurants in one central Birmingham location.

To complete the offer, The Mailbox promotes an exclusive Rewards scheme that provides cardholder members fantastic offers and promotions throughout the year, as well as the latest news and events announcements.

To launch the new Rewards card for 2010, Core was appointed within a short timescale of one month to create, project manage and launch a ‘Rewards Lounge’ within The Mailbox that would be used as a venue to launch the new card, as well as future campaigns, meetings and events.

The event objectives were to:

• Launch the new Rewards card and campaign with a VIP stylish event
• Raise the profile of The Mailbox and the Rewards offer among young professionals and the ‘great and the good’ of the city
• Promote the tenants and retailers with The Mailbox that are part of the Rewards scheme
• Create a stylish space that can be reused as a Rewards Lounge

VIP invitations

With the target audience in mind, a large bespoke database of young professionals, contacts and suppliers of The Mailbox was collated using Core’s in depth knowledge of the city community.

Core designed a stylish and unique VIP invitation within the Rewards scheme brand guidelines that mirrored the quality of the event and had a removable mock rewards card as a ticket for entry to the event. This was issued to the invitation database.

A HTML was also designed and issued to the invitation database as a reminder to RSVP detailing the special guests that Core had secured for the event. To compliment the fashion focused theme, British fashion designer Henry Holland was booked to play a DJ set later in the evening and, local X-Factor semi-finalist & West End leading lady Niki Evans performed throughout the night.

The venue

An vacant retail unit within The Mailbox provided the blank canvas for the entire interior design of the Rewards Lounge. With the Rewards colour scheme and the quality and luxury of The Mailbox’s established brand in mind, the space was designed to create a stylish impact, while also providing a flexible space to hold up to 150 people for the drinks and canapés event.

A major design feature of the space mirrored the new Rewards campaign literature through the use of traditional gold picture frames. Large frames were created to suspend and hold carefully selected items, supplied by The Mailbox retailers, to showcase the shopping destination’s USPs and product offer across the walls of the venue throughout the event.  Major consideration was given to the flexibility and longevity of the decoration within the lounge to fulfil the brief of using the space for future events through the coming year.

On the night

From the carefully selected exotic flowers, to the Rewards branded cloakroom tickets, every detail during the evening needed to convey quality, style and indulgence.

An exclusive ‘one night only’ gift of a free bottle of champagne with any purchase within The Mailbox was on offer during the evening as an incentive to sign-up to the Rewards scheme. Staff were briefed and on hand all evening to sign-up guests to the offer, which provided valuable data capture for the Rewards database.

To create interest and buzz around the venue on the night, a roped off pink carpet was laid out for guests at the entrance of the venue. The windows were designed to display large gold frame vinyl graphics, mirroring the interior design. The frames were used to display human mannequins that moved suitably as guests arrived to create impact and emphasise the fashion theme of the evening. The mannequins later offered canapés to the guests alongside the waiting staff who provided champagne and canapés from The Mailbox’s flagship store, Harvey Nichols.

To provide another focus of interest within the room, a special ‘Rewards’ cocktail was created and served by specially trained bartenders on an electronic i-bar that used the rewards card as an interactive feature.

Outcome

The event caused a real stir among the guests and even the passersby in The Mailbox. Great feedback was received from the client and the retail, leisure and restaurant tenants of The Mailbox that benefitted from the exposure and promotion. Overall the event fulfilled the objectives of raising the profile of The Mailbox and the Rewards scheme among the desired target audience and created a space that can now be reused for other high quality events. A high percentage of all of the guests signed up to the offer on the night, which resulted in a cleansed and updated database to target with the Rewards 2010 marketing campaign.