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How do you respond when you’re a local estate agent and a global pandemic disrupts your whole industry?
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How do they make a difference?
As an ambitious young entrepreneur, Daniel Robinson took over this small, centrally-located but struggling letting agent in 2010. His passion and creativity helped steady a sinking ship and gave the company a firm foundation on which to grow as he focused on using high quality Plymouth-based suppliers and trades to give Smeaton Homes a real home-grown appeal.
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What we did
The 2020 coronavirus outbreak in the UK posed a new and serious challenge to the business, and the whole housing industry. With the country on lockdown and various complex (and sometimes confusing) messages being communicated by the Government, Daniel and his team needed to find a way of interpreting and understanding what they could and couldn’t offer, and communicating this to their audience.
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Could people safely move house? If not, when? If so, how safe would it be to view a property? Was there anything they could do in the mean time to be as ready as possible to move when it was safer?
The agency put in place strict safety protocols and updated their website with up to date information, and we commissioned and directed a series of illustrations by local illustrator Iris Morgan to add impact and personality to a social media campaign that all led back to the guidance on the Smeaton website.
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How did this make a difference?
We helped Smeaton to translate their in-depth knowledge into practical advice, and keep potential customers aware of what they could and couldn’t do, adding value to local people and living up to their reputation as Plymouth’s landmark estate agents.
The campaign will have given peace of mind to those who came across it, both those who needed to move urgently and needed to find someone to help them and those who weren’t yet comfortable with moving but wanted to use lockdown to prepare themselves to move as soon as they did.
“This campaign has made a huge difference for us – the feedback has been amazing! Upshot really helped us clarify what we knew we needed to tell people, and brought the messages to life in a really eye-catching way. From what I’ve seen in Plymouth nobody else is doing anything quite like this and we’ve had so many responses and enquiries as a result, I joked with Owen that we might have to stop advertising so we have chance to catch up with them all!”
Daniel Robinson, Director, Smeaton Homes
