Primark Making a House a (Primark) Home

The brief

In a global first, Primark, one of the most recognisable brands on the high street with 460 stores in 17 countries, announced Fountain House on Belfast’s Donegall Place as the location of its first-ever standalone Primark Home store. JComms was appointed to develop a communications strategy to generate buzz and increase awareness of the opening.

What we did

Covid-19 produced a seismic shift in attitudes towards the home. They became places of rest, escape, play, and work. We began spending more time at home than ever and, since then, there has been sustained interest in interiors. Belfast has always been a welcoming city; its people friendly and approachable. These, too, are characteristics we sought to amplify through our strategy: ‘to make a house a home’. To embody this adage, creating one big extended family, we decided to transform a physical store into a welcoming space for friends and family alike – a home from home – and invite the city to (probably) the biggest housewarming in Belfast through a mix of media relations and creative content. Primark and Belfast have a storied history. Therefore, in tandem with consumer PR, a corporate communications strand was delivered to strengthen Primark’s corporate brand.

Living our strategy, we transformed Fountain House into a Home and oversaw the creative direction of an impactful digital asset for Primark’s own channels using faux out-of-home (FOOH) CGI. In it, the façade of Fountain House morphed into an inviting redbrick housefront, a family home, with the house number – 060325 – signalling the opening date.

Ever observant, on opening day the first queuing customer, Samuel Hamilton, was identified as the same gentleman who, to great fanfare, was also the first customer when Primark reopened its flagship Bank Buildings store in Belfast in 2022 following a blaze that devastated the site. JComms quickly briefed media on-site, creating a memorable watercooler moment that generated additional chatter and led to perhaps the campaign’s most powerful message, one that was entirely unprompted yet struck at the very heart of the strategy:

“[Primark] it’s like a big family, so it is.”

Samuel Hamilton

Execution

The campaign was delivered in two strands – consumer and corporate – around four key moments:

- Opening Announcement - Media Relations 

- Opening Announcement – Content Creation 

- Store Previews 

- Store Opening 

 

Impact

Our insight into the importance of Primark to the ‘Belfast Story’ highlighted this as ‘more than just another store opening’. Reports by The Irish News, BBC Newsline, and UTV, would inevitably champion Primak’s halo effect on regeneration.

Over 300 pieces of coverage with 5m+ estimated views were generated in just one month. They achieved over 40k engagements in addition to 1.35m views and 13k engagements for the FOOH asset on Instagram. The same asset on LinkedIn was viewed 27k times.

The store opened to a large queue. Sales significantly exceeded expectations with 5k purchasing customers over opening weekend. The first full trading week totalled 169% of predicted sales.