Humans of the Highstreet

HUMANS OF THE HIGHSTREET

Award Winning Humans of the Highstreet captures emotive stories told by traders during the COVID-19 pandemic Lockdowns.

Stockton Business Improvement is a non-profit organisation supporting over 350 businesses on the UK’s widest highstreet, Stockton-On-Tees. When the pandemic hit, small businesses across Britain were forced to close the doors and pull down the shutters. Their business future uncertain, and strict lockdowns threatened local jobs and livelihoods. We were asked to create an innovative campaign with a compelling message about the impact on small business during the pandemic.

Industry

Retail

Services

Concept

Copywriting

Creative Direction

Design

Digital

Marketing

Photography

Project management

Scripting

Social

Storytelling

We created Humans of the Highstreet marketing campaign to tell the human stories behind small highstreet businesses on UK’s widest highstreet. Storytelling is a powerful tool for connection and action. We wanted to strengthen the emotive connection with the public to uplift the small business. A well-told story when it comes to promoting people, and place audiences are much more inclined to connect with a good story than a good product.

Film

We wanted a series of mini stories to revolve around the experiences of the pandemic told by the business owner. We worked Wander to brief them on our idea to film and photograph a selection of Stockton businesses to catalogue a series of stories that reflected the town’s business inhabitants.

Design

Our goal was to show the good character of the humans behind the UKs widest highstreet. We repurposed content from the films using quotes and photographic stills featuring descriptive words that describe human attributes like creative, awesome, kind, and wonderful to build a variety of themes for the stories as each person and each story were unique and utterly their own.

Marketing & Social Media

We delivered a through the line marketing campaign using both ATL and BTL marketing strategies to create a comprehensive, integrated campaign that targeted a wide range of consumers across multiple channels.

The Results

The campaign went viral and featured in ‘The Grimsey Highstreet Report’ as an innovative marketing campaign. A key highlight of this work was a shortlisting for a UK Place Brand award at ATCM Awards. The project was also commissioned for a second series.

Testimonials

WHAT CLIENTS SAY

The rebrand by OOK has transformed our business and client income. They’ve created Alchemy Culture a new service income and ‘Talk Cancer Teesside’ a partnership with Cancer Research to support employers deal with cancer at work. We’re delivering impactful work while still making a profit, because of working with OOK.

Jo Davies, Managing Director Hr Alchemy

Max Freer’s experience and knowledge in agency, brand and marketing is really inspirational to us. She’s like a big sister. We’ve collaborated with OOK on a bunch of really cool client projects that’s delivered some epic results in particular Humans of the High Street that went viral.

Lou Toner COO Wander Films

I appointed OOK to work with my in-house marketing team to help Additional Lengths with the brand launch of our UK flagship store. Northing was left to chance. Their attention to detail, experience and expertise all resulted in a super successful brand launch. I would highly recommend working with OOK.

Victoria Lynch, Managing Director Additional Lengths & Creator of Remi Cachet

Max Freer is a ‘Brand Rockstar’. An exceptional Brand Marketeer to see in action. She has vision, creativity who consistently delivers on projects.

Sarah Heward, Marketing Manager, Blend Marketing

Max and her team created a strategic place brand campaign Keep Our Town in Focus to resist a major out of town development that threatened localness, livelihoods, jobs and security in Sutton Ashfield & Mansfield. The campaign gave local people an active voice to channel a volume of objections which led to the planning application being called in by Secretary of State and ultimately the applicant withdrawing the scheme. The ultimate result was achieved

Mark Robinson Co-Founder Ellandi & Chair of the High Streets Task Force Board

We turned to expert Brand Marketeer Max Freer to rebrand social allies. I had so many ideas yet struggled to put them on paper. Max helped un-pick our brand, company culture from beginning to end and put it all together. Her ideas are amazing and the way she works is even better. She listens to the brief so clearly and has really helped us come back to life, building new services for the agency and being an overall saint. What fabulously, talented and inspirational woman!

Jess Tucker, Managing Director Social Allies

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