Our work.
We thrive when we work with clients that share our values. We work with challenger brands that are looking to progress, innovate, push the boundaries and take things to deliver better
The Royal.
New venue launch
June 2025
Brief.
The Royal in Sutton Coldfield, formerly known as The Townhouse, a late-night venue, was preparing for a major transformation. With a complete change in identity, interior, and offer, the brief was to develop a bold creative concept to relaunch the space as The Royal: a reimagined British boozer rooted in tradition but designed for today.
Our task? To create and deliver an integrated, multi-channel campaign that would mark this new chapter, shifting perceptions, capturing attention, and driving footfall.
What we did.
We led the full strategic and creative transformation of The Royal, repositioning it from a late-night drinking venue formerly known as The Townhouse into a reimagined traditional British boozer. This rebrand celebrated both heritage and reinvention, with a unifying campaign and messaging platform: ‘Long Live The Royal’.
This creative concept became the foundation for all brand communications, influencing everything from tone of voice to visual identity and storytelling. It came to life across every channel, including short-form video content, social, paid media, PR, email, and in-venue touchpoints such as beer mats, A-boards, POS, and menus.
We developed a distinctive visual identity and accompanying brand guidelines to ensure consistency across all marketing channels. This included a complete redesign of The Royal’s website, optimised for both aesthetics and functionality, with seamless booking integration via a partnership with Design My Night to streamline the customer journey.
All social platforms were rebranded to align with the refreshed visual identity, creating a confident, modern expression of a heritage pub. We used the ‘Long Live The Royal’ platform to shape compelling visual storytelling, culminating in a pre-launch teaser campaign to build anticipation across social channels.
Working closely with Suburban Inns’ Executive Chef and operations team, we curated a menu that reflected the brand’s new direction — blending classic pub fare with seasonal dishes and standout produce from local partners including Silver Tree Bakery and Attic Brew Co.
To generate buzz around the relaunch, we issued targeted press releases to key regional media, focusing on the story behind ‘Long Live The Royal’ and what guests could expect from the refreshed offer. We also hosted a curated preview event, inviting lifestyle press, regional creators, and local community voices to experience the new-look pub firsthand, generating a wave of organic content, social engagement, and word-of-mouth.
To amplify launch momentum, we ran a geo-targeted paid social campaign aimed at local and foodie audiences, offering 50% off food in the first two weeks to encourage bookings and footfall, driving strong conversion from awareness to action.
Results.
At the time of writing this, the pre-launch activity had reached over 850k people, 540k views and an engagement rate of 7.30%. We drove over 5,000 people to the website to make a booking for the launch. Ultimately, we drove the busiest opening weekend for a Suburban Inns venue.
Mountain View Ranch.
Easter Paid Activity
April 2025
Brief.
Mountain View Ranch briefed us to deliver a robust paid media campaign to drive awareness, bookings and ultimately footfall for the Easter holidays period and specifically the key Easter bank holiday weekend. The aim was to sell out the Easter weekend period, regardless of the great British weather…
What we did.
First of all we assessed Mountain View Ranch’s previous booking data and audience profiles to establish where the core target audience is most active and where the paid media budget could be best utilised. Due to a tight budget, we focused the activity purely on Meta to ensure we drove the highest level of bookings for the lowest CPA.
Although we focused on only one channel, we segmented the activity to run across two objectives and multiple audience profiles to target a range of parents demographics, grandparents and audiences within a 55 mile radius of the Ranch. By combining both traffic and conversion ad campaigns, it allowed us to build awareness of Mountain View Ranch’s Easter schedule of events whilst also driving ticket sales through the bottom of the funnel conversion activity.
Creatively we used a mix of engaging short form video for story telling to drive reach and frequency alongside harder working ‘book now’ CTA on static and carousel ads to drive down the CPA on direct response ads.
Over the 4 week campaign, we monitored the creative and audience segmentation performance and up and down-weighted budgets according to the top performing campaigns measuring against the volume of campaigns,CPA and highest ROAS, which indicated a higher level of tickets purchased per booking.
Results.
During the campaign period, activity drove over 231k impressions and more than 2,100 new customers through to the Mountain View Ranch website. More importantly, the campaigns directly attributed 508 bookings which resulted in a 14:1 ROAS with, against a target of 6:1 and a blended CPA of just £2.82. And yes, the Easter bank holiday weekend sold out and it was sunny - hurray!
West Midlands Growth Company.
CleanTech Business Targeting
Jan - March 2025
Brief.
In December 2024, West Midlands Growth Company briefed SHC to manage and implement a paid media campaign targeting global CleanTech businesses across six key territories and four core target audiences, to make them aware of the Global Growth Programme and how it supports businesses like theirs to launch and scale within the West Midlands. The goal was to secure six new CleanTech businesses wanting to relocate and set up a hub in the West Midlands by the end of March 2025 - launching in mid-January this gave us just 10 weeks!
What we did.
We began by mapping the four key target audiences alongside the six country territories across digital media platforms and could clearly see that LinkedIn gave us the biggest opportunity to reach CleanTech businesses, globally.
Secondly, we reviewed the current CleanTech customer journey across the current West Midlands Growth company website and brochure to understand any opportunities and pain points. We decided that these needed to be revised to ensure that each of the four target audiences were directed through to a dynamic, personalised landing page which detailed solutions and benefits that the Global Growth Company could offer an emerging business more specifically within the CleanTech industry.
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As we had settled on LinkedIn as the core digital platform for this campaign, we devised a media plan that would segment activity into four campaigns to target each of the four core target audiences. Each audience would be targeted by industry, country territory, company size, and in some cases, job seniority, based on the company demographics that had been supplied by WMGC.
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Creatively, we curated four short form videos using existing WMGC footage to create a narrative which was relevant to each of the four core audiences primary needs, covering key USPs and reasons why CleanTech businesses should consider the West Midlands as place to set up a hub within the region.
Over the 10 week campaign, we monitored the creative and audience segmentation performance and up and down-weighted budgets based on where the highest volume of quality leads were being attributed. We also refined audiences by layering in additional filters to ensure we were reaching the right people to ensure lead quality.
Quickly into the campaign, we recognised that the campaign customer journey driving to a separate landing page wasn’t generating the volumes of leads required, and made the decision to switch the activity to LinkedIn lead generation campaigns, which quickly increased lead volume and also reduced the cost per lead.
Results.
During the campaign period, activity drove 4.5 million impressions, 33k clicks and 75 leads. More importantly, the campaign secured seven new CleanTech businesses to set up a hub within the West Midlands and join the Global CleanTech Programme, against a target of six landings. A great success in a short period of time!
Yakinori.
New Street Restaurant Launch
November 2024
Brief.
The Japanese restaurant brand, Yakinori, approached SHC as they were relaunching their Birmingham New Street restaurant, after it had been closed for two years due to flood damage. They wanted a launch campaign that would scream to all of Birmingham that Yakinori was back serving their infamous katsu curry with an opening event that would see a queue of people lining up the street to get into Yakinori.
Alongside the launch, Yakinori wanted to build a customer database for the Birmingham New Street restaurant by driving new sign ups to the Yakinori Club loyalty programme.
What we did.
Despite the challenges, we devised a multi-layer launch campaign which would run from the end of November to Christmas Eve to drive momentum and buzz and ultimately drive footfall and revenue during the peak Christmas trading period.
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To build awareness of the opening, we launched a digital campaign across organic and paid social, creators and digital PR to announce we were going to offer Yakinori’s famous katsu curry for just £1 on the opening day to Yakinori Club Members. All proceeds from the opening day would be donated to Yakinori’s charity of the year and local charity, Birmingham Children's Hospital.
To add an experiential element to the campaign, we hid posters around the city centre for customers to find and hand into Yakinori on opening day to win a £25 Yakinori voucher. We also worked with a range of creators and social publications such as Independent Birmingham to run multiple competitions, which were drip-fed pre, during and post the launch activity.
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On the evening of the opening, we held two creator events where we invited Birmingham key creators and media to an exclusive preview of the new Yakinori restaurant, which was paired with a Sake tasting session delivered by a local Sake influencer.
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Once the store had opened, we launched a 25% off Monday - Friday offer to all Yakinori Club Members to continue to drive awareness of the new restaurant opening as well as driving new sign ups to the Yakinori Club database.
Results.
The opening day was a huge success with a long queue of customers queuing through Birmingham New Street all waiting to get a taste of Yakinori’s katsu curry. Over 900 £1 katsu curries were sold between 11am - 3pm on opening day. Throughout the launch campaign, Yakinori gained 6,060 new Yakinori Club members and 677 people redeemed the 25% off offer, which equated to £23,818 in revenue for the Birmingham New Street restaurant.
Gemporia.
Black Friday
November 2024
Brief.
Gemporia, a long term client of ours, is a jewelry and lifestyle brand. For Black Friday they were looking to achieve breakthrough sales performance and we put forward a multi channel proposal to make it happen. Historically, Black Friday has been one of the most competitive moments in retail, so it was essential we crafted a strategy that not only drove traffic and reach but also converted into sales.
With a focus on digital performance marketing, we developed a multi-channel strategy encompassing multiple digital touchpoints across Google, Bing, Pinterest, TikTok, and Meta to ensure maximum reach and engagement across our target audiences.
What we did.
We looked at historical performance data to identify our best performing channels and the most impactful channels and audience segments for Black Friday sales. Then we implemented specific creative tailored to each channel, with multiple Black Friday offers to drive interest, engagement and action.
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For each channel we ran campaigns across the full purchase funnel, nurturing users down the funnel to conversion. We used a mix of engaging short form video for story telling with harder working product ads and promotional search ads with ad extensions where applicable. We also drove frequency with retargeting to drive home the sales on offer.
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Once activity kicked off, we monitored daily the creative and target audience performance, up and down-weighting budgets in accordance with results. We used analytical tools to see performance across the full channel mix and see the impact at channel and campaign level reallocating spend for maximum ROI.
Results.
The Black Friday campaign was a record sales period for Gemporia with 2024 also being their best year yet for e-commerce, thanks to increased marketing activity within digital channels. The highlights were a 131% increase YOY for revenue. 81% increase in average order value and a 41% increase in YOY transactions. We also achieved a blended ROAS of 10, smashing the ROAS target of 6 during the Black Friday period.
Roof Maker.
Pinterest Campaign
2024
Brief.
Roof Maker, a leading provider of bespoke roof lights and glazing solutions, wanted to enhance its Pinterest presence to drive greater brand visibility, engagement, and website traffic. Recognising untapped potential in their current Pinterest strategy, we undertook an in-depth audit and provided Roof Maker actionable recommendations to maximise search visibility and traffic through to the website
What we did.
Conducted a comprehensive audit of Roof Maker’s Pinterest activity, focusing on the following key areas:
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Content Curation and Order: Evaluated existing boards, pins, and visual consistency.
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Performance Metrics: Looked at historical data on reach, engagements, and outbound clicks.
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SEO: Reviewed pin descriptions, titles, and keywords to ensure they were optimised towards a user’s search behaviour
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Audience Insights: Looked at targeting strategies to align with ideal customer profiles and trends.
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Once we had the audit findings we went about enhancing RoofMakers Pinterest performance by:
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Reorganising the board structure in line with target audiences search trends and user behaviour
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Introduced new visually compelling pins with consistent branding, look and feel
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Optimised pin descriptions with relevant keywords to improve discoverability
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Established regular performance reviews to track growth
Results.
The results exceeded all expectations driving huge spikes in reach and outbound traffic to the Roof Maker website.
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Reach: Before Launch: 3,500 people reached (week prior) After Launch: 28,500 people reached (week of launch) A substantial 714% increase in reach, significantly boosting brand visibility.
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Engagement: Achieved a 16% increase in engagements compared to the previous quarter.
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Outbound Clicks: Recorded 5,300 outbound clicks, marking a 429% increase compared to the last quarter.
South & City College Birmingham.
Summer Enrolment Campaign
June - September 2024
Brief.
​Support South & City College in maximising enrolment numbers for their September 2024 intake through a digital campaign to drive online applications. The campaign’s main objective was to focus on reaching prospective ‘school leaver’ students, aged 15-18, either directly or via supportive parents across the summer months when they are actively in the consideration phase of their education journey, and push them down the funnel to make a completed online application.
What we did.
Raising awareness and driving conversions required a layered approach with a multi-channel campaign. We ran activity across three key platforms; with Meta and Google being our primary channels, driving both awareness and applications, supported by lower-level TikTok activity to increase awareness and frequency of visibility.
The College offers a broad range of courses across a multitude of entry levels, subjects and campuses. Digital activity therefore needed to educate as well as create impact and ensure cut-through amongst competition. A blend of campaign assets (video and static) and ad copy variations were created and tailored to suit the channel and stage of the decision-making journey.
With such a wide range of courses to promote, activity across both Google and Meta was delivered via an ‘umbrella approach’, where courses were grouped into vocational categories. This approach allowed us to successfully target using a combination of phrase and exact match keywords to reach interested parents & students, and was a more efficient use of media spend. A Performance Max generic ‘catch all’ campaign was used to take advantage of ‘in market’ interests and additional placements, and was designed to supplement the more segmented search campaigns.
Regular monitoring of ad performance and client check-ins meant that we could keep close to our metrics, most crucially the number of online applications. Activity was then tailored in realtime to focus in on and support specific courses or campuses that were struggling more than others. Spend, messaging and CTA was also adapted to reflect the timeframe and key dates, accommodating the exam period, school holidays and results day.
Results.
Over the months of June-September, we drove over 4 million impressions and 45k clicks to the South & City website, with an overall CTR of 1.12% (Google incl. Performance Max alone had an impressive CTR of 20%)! Total application numbers reached 1227 resulting in a blended ‘click to course application’ conversion rate of 2.7%.
ProCook.
Kitchen Favourites
October 2023
Brief.
Launch the new Kitchen Favourites campaign fronted by BBC’s Matt Tebbutt across social channels Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok. Rework above-the-line creative to make it relevant for each social platform, to ensure cut through and engagement. In addition work alongside Matt Tebbutt to maximise the exposure and reach through a series of paid partnership Instagram campaigns.
What we did.
This brief wasn’t as simple as having a 15 second edit shot vertically for social - we needed to bring the story of the Kitchen Favourites campaign to life. Using the raw footage we identified four key stories that could be at the heart of the social campaign. The four stories gave the social users something different and were drip-fed throughout the six week campaign period, in the lead up to the core Black Friday trading period. ​
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To create a cohesive approach, we also created four hero stories for Matt Tebbutt to post on his social channels as part of the paid partnership element of this campaign.
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Finally, we aligned with relevant creators across TikTok and Instagram to create their own Kitchen Favourites using ProCook products to bolster the campaign further.
Results.
Delivered over 1 million organic impressions and a 3.27% engagement rate (including the most viewed piece of TikTok content on the ProCook relaunched TikTok channel). Social attributed conversions increased by 267% and revenue by 239% on the lead up to Black Friday (these results exclude the Black Friday trading weekend)
Selfridges.
Bringing Barbie to Birmingham
July 2023
Brief.
Bring to life the in-store activation of #BarbieatSelfridges to increase footfall and awareness of the branded partnership with one of 2023’s must-see films!
What we did.
We got creative and created a native style video which captured the in-store activity across Selfridges. The content focused on the amazing ‘Playtime’ Barbie dedicated areas in-store with the view to drive customers into the store to engage with the interactive elements.
Alongside the in-store activation, we also highlighted the key Barbie products on sale and obviously the iconic Birmingham Bull being turned pink for the collab!
Results.
We delivered over 900k organic social views and contributed to a 6% increase in footfall to the Barbie Playtime activation over the film’s opening weekend.
Gemporia.
Delivering Better PPC Performance
July 2023
Brief.
Gemporia’s paid search activity had been delivering a consistently strong ROAS, however, there was an appetite to deliver more and as an Agency we could see that the opportunity for Gemporia to dominate across paid search was huge. The account needed to be restructured to ensure that it was maximising highest ticket items and categorise and become more fluid and flexible depending on seasonality.
What we did.
Through initial BETA testing, we could see that Performance Max was going to be a huge driver for Gemporia and sit at the centre of the account structure. To ensure that we could be agile from a budget perspective and bid efficiently on top performing campaigns and ad groups, we created product specific Performance Max campaigns based on top selling and high-ticket products categories (i.e gold and diamond). We overlaid this with traditional search campaigns, DSA and retargeting to ensure we were delivering a full funnel approach where audiences were most active.
Results.
The results have been better than ever imagined with 155% increase in conversions, 128% increase in revenue and 136% increase in ROAS YoY. All of this was delivered with a 3% reduction in spend
ProCook.
Re-strategised to Deliver Better
September 2022
Brief.
Realign the ProCook social strategy to the wider business strategy and ensure it stands out from the competition. Assess where the ProCook customer is most active and which channels hold the biggest opportunity for ProCook to grow its social presence and make more impact.
What we did.
The ProCook social channels had become too cluttered and they were becoming saturated. They were posting on feed every day and not tailoring the content to suit each channel and its core user.
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We analysed the market across a range of primary, secondary and tertiary competitors to review ProCook’s position and where they could make the most impact. We then devised three core content pillars to ensure that all social content delivered one of the following key attributes: show awesome results, ease of use or passion for cooking.
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Alongside the three key pillars, we implemented a hero, hub and help approach to delivering content across the business and delivering against the business’ commercial objectives.
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Finally, we realigned the content to ensure the product was the primary focus to convey the excellent quality, value and expertise behind every ProCook product. The content strategy focused on a native video-first approach in order to gain wider reach and higher engagement levels.
Results.
From October - December the new strategic approach delivered 114% increase in reach, 554% increase in engagements and 162% increase in videos views compared to the previous period. We also saw a 168% increase in revenue directly attributed to organic social.
University College Birmingham.
Delivering Better for Birmingham Students
2022
Brief.
University College Birmingham (UCB) briefed SHC to devise, run and optimise an integrated digital campaign for the new academic college intake. The campaign needed to reach prospecting students aged 15 – 16 and drive completed applications.
What we did.
As Google restricts targeting under 16s across the platform, we needed to create an integrated approach which targeted not only students but also their parents to allow us to leverage core conversion tactics across the Google network. .
The media plan focused on a full funnel approach and from a channel perspective, we focused parents’ activity to deliver across the Google, Meta and Spotify and student activity across Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and Spotify. As a workaround for targeting students across the Google Network, we used an education specific platform, Educate, which used mobile data to target under 16s with display and YouTube ads.
To ensure that we were driving both students and parents down the application funnel, we ran cross-channel retargeting activity to capture engaged audiences from awareness-focused platforms such as TikTok and Spotify and retarget them with conversion tactics through the Meta network, where we saw students more in converting.
Results.
Overall the campaign delivered 4640 completed applications which is 23% uplift YoY against a target of 10% uplift. In total there were 1538 enrolled students against a target of 1300, which proves the campaign delivered a higher quality of applications year on year. Alongside these commercial figures, the TikTok creative was also selected by TikTok to be featured on the Creative best Practice platform as a top performing ad example.
VOLA.
Icelandic Elemental Living
May 2022
Brief.
As an iconic Danish design brand, VOLA needed to establish a high presence on Pinterest where architects, interior designs and specifiers are active. VOLA briefed us on creating a hardworking business-as-usual strategy, with overlaid spikes of innovative campaigns.
What we did.
We started by realigning the business-as-usual Pinterest activity to have an SEO approach of matching Boards, Pin titles and descriptions to users' search behaviours.
Once this was nailed, we then layered campaign activity, starting with a design and heritage-focused campaign, centred on Iceland.
The campaign ran across organic and paid activity using static and video creative formats to help build awareness of VOLA across key markets and drive quality traffic through the newly launched 'On Design' section of the website.
Results.
The organic restructuring of the VOLA account led to a 57% increase in organic impressions and 76% increase in engaged users.
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The Iceland campaign not only exceeded all targets but it smashed Pinterest industry benchmarks by delivering a 140% more efficient CPM, 94% higher CTR and 80% lower CPCs.
Olivias.com.
Home Envy Guaranteed
April 2022
Brief.
Deliver a brand campaign which positioned Olivias.com alongside established retailers such as Dunelm and Wayfair. Devise a creative campaign where Olivias.com appeared to be everywhere and that was fully trackable.
What we did.
We identified the core Olivias.com audience as female aged 25 - 45 who are heavily active on Instagram and Pinterest. When delving deeper into their media habits, we noticed existing customers thrived from gaining gratification from sharing their Olivias.com purchasers with their social following; this led us to create the 'Home Envy Guaranteed' creative hook.
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From a media planning perspective, we defined a paid media approach across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest. We ran brand uplift studies across Facebook and YouTube to track the brand recall and uplift to understand the true effect of the brand campaign.
Results.
Overall brand uplift for Olivias.com during the campaign period increased by 815% and consideration for buying directly from Olivias.com increased by 3x.
Buxton Crescent.
The Water's Waiting
June 2021
Brief.
Buxton Crescent launched in September however due to the pandemic, had to close its doors again shortly after in November 2020. We therefore needed to devise a creative campaign to launch Buxton Crescent for the second time and drive bookings and revenue for the key summer period in 2021.
What we did.
Buxton Crescent sits at the heart of a natutal spa town and the building itself has been a spa since the Roman times. Playing homage to Buxton Crescent’s history we played on the notion that the world might have paused, but nature never stops and created ‘The Water's Waiting’ campaign.
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We amplified the creative concept through a well-crafted media plan which combined increasing overall awareness with direct response conversion activity.
To launch the campaign we upweighted the media budget to the awareness phase and as the campaign progressed increased the weightage of budget behind the consideration and conversions phases to drive bookings and revenue.
Results.
The campaign exceeded targets and delivered a blended 4.5 ROAS. Buxton Crescent was fully booked during the 2021 summer period.