Our ‘Donut Drop’ events united students, made a splash on socials and resulted in staggering sales
PROJECT
Donut Drop
CHALLENGE
To evolve Unite Students’ overarching campaign to create an experiential concept that would help boost sales for the 2023/2024 academic year, drive UGC and position them as the obvious choice for student accommodation.
SOLUTION
Using the data, behaviours and learnings from 2021, we delivered a customer-tailored experience never attempted by Unite before called Donut Drop.
Our bespoke events that utilised modular event kits, included a ‘donut train’ (sushi style delivery mechanic) as the hero centrepiece, DJ’s spinning the tunes, branded pinball machines, donut trampolines, social mechanics and a strong team of TRO brand ambassadors to help keep the queuing masses entertained.
Our smart activation plan – with a hub and spoke approach designed to launch the 23/24 sales campaign nationally with a blast and drive sales momentum – saw us visit 18 cities across the UK, from Aberdeen to Cardiff. 7 core locations were identified where we would deliver the headline-grabbing larger-scale activations to support priority markets, with a further 48 hub locations receiving a ‘lighter’ version of the experience, enabling scalability.
In just 8 days, we delivered 55 events across the UK, distributing just under 38,000 sugary rings of goodness to the students. Even more impressively, our Donut Drop campaign resulted in staggering sales.
TRO’s creativity, excellent communication, hard work and relentless ‘can-do’ attitude brought the Donut Drop idea to life in rapid-time and in a way that was way beyond our expectations.
TRO became an extension of our team and their collaboration with both our internal team and wider all-agency group was vital in delivering the activation within the required timeframes and on such a large scale.
The team at TRO are a pleasure to work with – always positive and always with a smile even when under pressure – and there’s no doubt that we would not have been able to deliver such a successful campaign without them.
Jim Williams
Senior Domestic Marketing Manager, Unite Students
