A 12-year partnership: Building the Wickes brand
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The challenge
In 2023, ÃÛѨÊÓƵ, The Story Lab and Wickes continued their long-standing partnership, now in its twelfth year.
The main campaign’s aims were to drive awareness and brand consideration whilst increasing conversion by communicating offers and driving action. This supported the overarching ongoing mission: for Wickes to be the partner of choice for Home Improvers and Trade.
To achieve this we needed to deliver an integrated, creative, innovative and effective campaign across platforms.
Using both radio & magazine brands, this campaign showed full funnel impact, meeting these objectives:
- Improved brand awareness ​
- Increased purchase consideration​
- Changed perceptions​
- Increased conversions
The partnership extended its reach by targeting key audiences using some of ÃÛѨÊÓƵ’s biggest brands, including Absolute Radio, Hits Radio, Planet Rock & Grazia.
The idea
The long running Absolute Radio sponsorship was the backbone of the campaign reaching the core target audience. Grazia content drove the secondary audience, looking to women to feel like Wickes is a place they can shop for inspiration and practical DIY. Digital audio was an additional campaign layer, precisely targeting the trade audience. Combined, this delivered inspiration and sparked passion for home improvement aligned to Wickes vision to see ‘A Wickes project in every home’.
The execution
Through a considered and adaptable range of campaign inventory from always on credits, to ‘Wickes Fix’ promotions and weekly Friday Features, Bauer were able to be agile and adapt. We not only dialed up key Wickes products in our golden calendar moments such as Bank Holiday Weekend takeovers, but they were also able to demonstrate meaningful change to the communities they are in.
In March, we embarked on a journey to give one community programme the support it needed to refresh its outdoor area. The Wetherby Sports Association were the winners and Dave and the team officially broke ground on the site to celebrate the start of their transformation as we hosted our very own festival WICKES FEST with Kasabian headlining with an intimate set and awarding the Weatherby £10,000 to spend at Wickes to get the job done.
The results
The campaign has historically been measured through Campaign Effectiveness research, proving the partnership hits core KPIs. The most recent insight in November led to brilliant results, showing how the ongoing campaign still smashes targets.
97% awareness of the campaign from Absolute radio listeners
60% agreed that the sponsorship has improved over the years and increased their awareness of Wickes
75% of Absolute Radio listeners like the sponsorship
64% purchased from Wickes after hearing the advertising.
The association between Wickes, Dave Berry and Absolute Radio make campaign recognisers feel more positive about Wickes at 73% (+19% in 2023 alone from a base of 35% in 2014) as positivity has grown for Absolute Radio at 55% (+12%) and Dave Berry at 53% (+22%) in 2023.
Wickes are also on board as a partner utilizing Bauer and Veritone’s unique in market Audio attribution Tool, which measures uplift in web traffic within an 8 minute window post advertising on air – Wickes have seen a significant shift in uplift this year across their activity at 15.9%.