Published by Sue Johns-Chapman
Published Date 17.03.2022 
Liverpool-based creative marketing agency Kenyons is celebrating two nominations at the 2022 UK Digital PR Awards, for Digital PR Low Budget Campaign of the Year and Best Integrated Digital PR Campaign.
The agency, founded in 1990, is jointly shortlisted with its client, St Johns Liverpool, the largest indoor shopping centre in the city, which has a history stretching back over five decades.
After a challenging two years for businesses in the retail sector, Kenyons worked with its client to develop an engaging PR strategy to welcome shoppers back post-lockdown and increase footfall and dwell time within the centre.
The strategy, deployed across two social-led campaigns during 2021, focused on influencer engagement, working with a range of nano- and micro-influencers with relatable profiles, communicating with shoppers via a peer-to-peer approach.
By working with influencers across varying age brackets, Kenyons and St Johns were able to communicate with a spectrum of different consumers, promoting the full breadth of the centre’s offering across retail, hospitality and leisure.
This core influencer activity, featured across channels including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, was supported by a digital out-of-home placement in the city centre, and video and animation deployed across the centre’s own social channels to maintain engagement with St Johns’ grassroots audience.
“Being nominated for not one, but two UK Digital PR Awards is a brilliant achievement, demonstrating our first-class credentials in executing creative PR campaigns”, said Lorna Young, marketing director at Kenyons.
“In particular, being a finalist for Low Budget Campaign of the Year is a highlight for us, showing that big budgets aren’t a prerequisite for achieving big results.”
Neil Ashcroft, centre manager at St Johns Liverpool, added: “Retail centres up and down the country have found the last two years especially challenging, and we needed a campaign that would engage our core shopper and achieve results.
“An influencer-led approach enabled us to communicate directly with our shoppers by sharing content through relatable online profiles, allowing our customers to see themselves reflected in the centre’s comms.
“It’s been really impactful, not only in terms of boosting engagement, but also in terms of seeing our creative work translate into tangible results for our community of retailers.”
This is the first time Kenyons has been nominated at the UK Digital PR Awards. The nominations follow its shortlisting for Female-Led Business of the Year (2022) and Small Integrated Agency of the Year (2021), and its managing director Rosie Kenyon’s nomination for Outstanding Contributor to the North (2021).
St Johns Liverpool is a multi-award-winning shopping centre and one of the most heavily awarded in the last three years in the UK. The centre won the Best Digital Marketing Campaign – Retail award at the 2019 Northern Digital Awards, alongside Kenyons.
