Pop-up retail has been an interesting trend for the past few years. Now, thanks to London’s RKCR/Y&R, the concept is being stretched considerably (to include service providers).
Ad Age and Shots are both featuring stories about the agency’s one-week pop-up agency experiment in its local Camden neighborhood. Here’s a passage from the Shots piece:
Camden is a great home for the agency. With some iconic businesses from world famous tattoo parlours to some of the best vinyl exchanges in the country,” explains ECD Damon Collins. “We’re offering our time on a first come first served basis for a whole week to help all comers who feel they’d like a bit of strategic or creative advice. We’re hoping to end up with multi-media solutions for a number of businesses and have already lined up poster and press insertions in a variety of media.”
According to head of planning Ben Kay, the project is bringing the agency closer to the community. “From a community perspective, every ad agency should be able to give something back. It’s nice to be a little more aware of your surrounding environment and to link in to the hundreds of people living and working here.”
“I think everyone’s got something to gain from this. Obviously there’s the positive publicity, but it also gives creative teams the chance to work on dream briefs. Weird, wacky companies that don’t have 15 different layers of approval. Internally it works really well,” says Kay.
I love this idea and would like to see it replicated stateside. Generally speaking, our industry has a horrible reputation. Volunteering our time and having a stake in the community goes a long way toward solving that image problem. It also exposes our profession to a wider range of people, many of whom don’t realize where commercials come from.
