Old St. Records Cafe | Venue Launch
When I first joined Rocket Leisure (aka The Records Bars), the big thing on the horizon was the opening of the Old St. Records Cafe. Adjoined onto our live music and cocktail bar Old St. Records in Shoreditch, the Cafe was to set to be a day-time offering, with delicious coffee, an all-day brunch and lunch menu, and a selection of carefully curated vinyl for sale.
A year into the role, and with a solid base for the company’s marketing output now in place, I set to work on how to launch the Cafe to the local Shoreditch and wider cafe-loving London audience.
The Cafe needed it’s own identity to separate itself from the Old St. Records bar and make it’s own name for itself in Shoreditch. I spent time defining it’s tone of voice, which differed to the tone for the bars. I set up and managed both a content photo shoot and video shoot, which focused on the coffee, the food and the people, giving it a bright, airy feel - again, a stark contrast to the feel of our nightlife venues.
I sourced and briefed a new graphic designer, and we got to work on the look and feel for the tangibles in the cafe, such as the menus, the posters and the vinyl dividers, as well as all the flyers for the local outreach.
We decided to give the cafe a week-long launch, which consisted of three main events:
An day of coffee-inspired influencer events, with a latte art masterclass in the morning, and an espresso martini one in the evening to build a social media following. The benefit of having two events, although double the work, means you get double the opportunity for people to attend. A lot of influencers work a full-time job alongside running their channels, so an evening session means they are not left out.
A week-long schedule of DJ’s playing live from the Cafe, programmed by my colleague Steve (Head of Music). He did an amazing job of securing both Gilles Peterson and Norman Jay, as well as a live broadcast from Hoxton Radio from in the cafe, which gave me some brilliant PR and social media opportunities.
A free coffee giveaway for the launch week - with the first 100 coffees free every day. This resulted in queues as soon as we opened the doors…and there’s nothing like a London queue to create a buzz!
As a one man marketing team and no help from an agency, it was certainly hard graft. I drafted press releases and sold them into the media, achieving coverage in key London press such as London on the Inside and Mr. Hyde (ShortList’s newsletter).
I hand-picked a list of 50 influencers to invite to the coffee-inspired events, with personalised emails to each one. Personalisation is so important when it comes to influencers, as they are inundated with emails so you have to put in that extra time and effort to make your email stand out. I also created goodie bags to give out at the influencer events, with hand-painted branded coffee cups, a selection of goodies from our coffee partner, and each guest was allowed to pick a vinyl from our shelves to take home. A lovely touch, which results in a couple of extra social media posts when they get home.
The Old St. Records Cafe Instagram went from 0 to 1000 followers within a couple of months of launching and the cafe was packed for the big DJ sets from Gilles and Norman with the PR activity and some targeted paid media spend.
The amazing launch week certainly put the cafe on the map in Shoreditch!
R.J.x