Wavemaker launch Mayor of London’s ‘Let’s Do London’ campaign

Wavemaker is incredibly proud to be awarded the £2.8m media planning and buying brief for London & Partners’ launch of the Mayor of London’s ‘Let’s Do London’ recovery campaign, after discussions with Wavemaker and OMD/OmiGov. The activity launched on 17th May and will run across the summer until October. 

Domestic tourism is at heart of the Mayor’s plan to ensure the survival of central London’s hard-hit retail, hospitality, and cultural venues.  This flagship national campaign has been designed to encourage Londoners and UK visitors back into central London and help kickstart London’s recovery. 

Visitors can expect to see a full and exciting programme of seasonal initiatives, events and public art instillations rolled out across the period,  with David Hockney creating a special artwork as part of a takeover of Piccadilly Circus.  The activity is supported by a national advertising campaign across VoD, TV, radio social, outdoor and search, rolling out from May 17th, alongside PR, partners’, and City Hall’s own channels.

The objective of the London & Partners (L&P) campaign was to simulate visits into to central London and generate incremental spend. In normal times L&P prioritises attracting overseas visitors to London but due to Covid 19 and the uncertainty around overseas travel, the organisation has shifted focus to prioritise visits from the domestic market. 

Knowing the impact of the pandemic has been felt very differently by people and places across the UK, the team knew that a blanket national campaign would have greater success if the campaign planning could reflect audience and geographic nuance.  To achieve this, the team developed a “regional opportunity indicator” approach based on a range of data points that includes population, confidence to travel, distance from London, average trip spends and economic impact of Covid-19. 

The aggregation of this data resulted in an opportunity ranking of regions with the South East, East of England and East Midlands as top tier priority regions; and Wales, the South West and Ulster as tier three markets.  This foundation allowed the team to devise a campaign that still reaches the length and breadth of the nation, but also dials up investment into areas of the country more likely to plan a visit to central London. 

Finally, working with Wavemaker Audience Science and London & Partners’ own economists, the team developed an evaluation approach to measure the impact of the activity on both intent and action.  Taking a dynamic, in-campaign approach allows optimisation of our media while it’s live, and to focus on better performing regions, ultimately increasing the campaign’s impact on generating the incremental spend the Mayor is so keen to see.