Bedford Heights is a contemporary, diverse business hub which is home to over 80 resident businesses and many others who use the co working, hot desking and meeting room facilities.
Bedford Heights features a lounge, café, wellness studio and gym set around three courtyards and a Texan garden, making it Bedford’s leading business destination
The Brief:
Announce was approached by Bedford Heights’ landlord, Verve Developments Ltd, who wanted a local PR agency to raise the profile of the business centre and position it as the business destination locally.
Our approach:
Announce provides a full PR and marketing service for Bedford Heights managing social media, media relations, events, internal communications and marketing communications.
We needed to ensure that all of Bedford Heights external and internal communications reflected the high quality, contemporary offering, whilst accurately conveying the depth and breadth of services and facilities available at the business centre.
We identified that the business centre had been suffering from an image problem, a legacy of the previous owners who had failed to invest in the building.
Verve Developments on the other hand had invested significantly in Bedford Heights since taking ownership, keen to put the business centre on the map and provide businesses with office space they would look forward to being in.
We audited all of the communications channels and quickly set about establishing a consistent look and feel and tone of voice. We elevated the language used and adopted positioning statements and key messages that would target Bedford Heights’ ideal clients.
We organised new photography, as we identified that whilst the building is a well known landmark in Bedford, local awareness of the purpose and interior of the space was low. Aspirational, modern and enticing imagery was used across all external and internal comms channels, including a new website.
We also set about solidifying links with the local community, generating on message press coverage in key local media titles and inviting local groups and organisations to hold events and meet with the management team at Bedford Heights. We wanted to ensure that Bedford Heights had an ‘open door’ policy with local community initiatives.
Whilst it was important to improve external communications, internal communications was also a key part of the overall strategy. With 80 businesses using Bedford Heights, we needed to ensure that client retention remained high. After all, it’s more cost effective to retain clients than gain new ones.
Internal comms presented its own set of challenges, not least because the types of businesses are diverse. Some are one man bands, some SMEs, and some large corporates with 100s of employees. To combat the challenge of a multi-occupier space, we utilised a variety of tactics including e-newsletters, physical posters and flyers, in-house events such as networking and pop up shopping, and social media.
The Results:
Ultimately, over a three year period and in spite of the challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, marketing communications has contributed to an increase in occupancy from 75% to 100%.
Our work has directly benefited Cambria in terms of new business. PR has served to bring in new leads which have converted to clients.
What’s more, Cambria now has a consistent tone of voice along with regular, on message communications across a range of channels.]
“I approached Announce after seeing the work they had done for other clients locally. Our "message" to our customers was confused, irregular and not always looking the same!
Quickly, Lindsay and Felicity came up with a plan of action of how to make sure we have one voice, working to one vision. During 2021, they have methodically worked through this process to the point where we are now generating new leads and business as a direct consequence of their work. Would recommend highly.
