Background
The Trafford Centre is a world-renowned destination, attracting millions of shoppers through its doors every year with some of the best fashion brands all under one roof.
But the business really struggles to gain national media coverage for anything which links it to fashion, one of its core pillars.
Selling square meters and not designer bags, titles had no reason to feature them over any other Malls, even when hosting large scale fashion events.
They needed a moment – something which wasn’t tote bags and pop-up catwalks.
The Response
- A world fashion first – the intu Little Black Graphene Dress
- Bringing together, fashion’s iconic LBD and Manchester’s very own Nobel Prize winning super material – Graphene for the first time in fashion
- The dress incorporated smart technology to show the model’s breathing patterns with an LED transmitting a signal from the chest floating on a transparent strip of graphene. It was developed by Cute Circuit
- Manchester high fashion model Bethan Sowerby modelled the dress
- Dress was revealed to the world’s media at the Trafford Centre with exclusive interviews with the design team
The Results
- Coverage delivered a reach of 375M with widespread national and regional media coverage including Daily Mail, BBC News, The Guardian, The Sun, Independent, Granada Reports and M.E.N
- Campaign was adopted by Department of Trade to showcase ‘Great Innovation’ across the world with posters at airports and embassies and the dress displayed at world trade shows
- Campaign won PRCA Dare Award for best use of media relations
- Dress went on a world tour including to other intu shopping centres as well as fashion and art museums.
**Work carried out whilst at Carousel PR**
