DFO is a cult shopping centre brand, loved by fashionistas and bargain hunters for its premium retailers offering unbeatable value. Hunter was brought on board to introduce the DFO brand to Western Australia from the ground breaking right through to the doors opening on launch day.
With little brand recognition in the WA market, we were enlisted to spread the word via publicity and influencer engagement to ensure the State’s first DFO centre launched as a well-known shopping destination.
It’s always a blessing to work with a client that media are itching to cover, but it required us to strategically map out publicity opportunities, manage our media relationships and ensure we were securing the best value and highest quality coverage for the client.
Over a three-month campaign period, Hunter secured two Today Tonight segments, a number of bulletin stories across Channel 7 and Channel 9 News, interviews on 6PR and a variety of print pieces across general news, property and business pages.
…Not to mention our execution of an epic launch date announcement that [we think!] was an industry first with custom hand-stamped confetti filled reveal balloons delivered to Perth’s who’s who.
Perth Airport Chairman Nev Power, John Carey MLA, Executive GM Development Vicinity Centres Carolyn Viney
The project culminated with an early start on DFO’s opening day managing live crosses from inside the centre for both Channel 7’s Sunrise and Channel 9’s TODAY programs and a media conference just before the doors opened. The campaign achieved a total reach of more than 26.5 million while DFO saw 25,000 people come to shop on opening day.
For us, it was a fantastic exercise to pull apart a bigger story, a shopping centre opening, to discover, craft and pitch newsworthy stories to a variety of media outlets, achieving widespread brand recognition.