Reawakening a city post Covid-19
City of York Council
How do you bring one of the UK’s best places to live and work back to life after lockdown?
That was our task, starting with supporting the City of York Council team to prepare the city to re-open with only days’ notice from central government.
Ideas Group delivered a transformational integrated communication campaign to help businesses re-open and to encourage residents and ultimately visitors to safely return to the city to relax, shop, explore and work.
York has a rich history with over 2000 years of re-inventing itself and 2020 has been daunting, with the huge questions in everyone’s minds – how do we recover, how do we stay in business, and now, how do we reopen – safely and viably? We created a campaign that would be informative and encouraging in equal measure and with a collaborative feel - very much with people and York’s values at the heart.
We created the proposition and campaign messaging, and produced business and retail support packs, outdoor media, signage, resident comms, social media content and an animated video - all in 10 days.
The result:
After just six weeks, York’s carparks had reached 85% capacity and foot traffic already at 60% of 2019.
“Over 600 businesses registered for free support packs and the social engagement was huge, not least with the animated video viewed more than 147k times in the first weeks and all other social platforms achieving 285k reach and upwards of 10k engagement. Ideas Group support to make this happen went truly above and beyond in both commitment and expertise.” Claire Foale, head of communications at City of York Council
