The Power of a Regional Marketing Campaign

There’s nothing like a strong regional brand campaign to really make your consumers feel valued and understood. Emphasising regional dialect and local jokes or phrases packs a punch when it comes to advertising – it not only resonates with your audience but starts a conversation with those who don’t quite ‘get it’ in the area. Regional marketing and advertising campaigns consist of location-specific promotional campaigns that both global and local brands run. The purpose of this type of content is to target customers in a specific region, with the goals of achieving brand affinity and driving local enquiries and/or sales. 

In this blog, we’re diving in to all things regional and personal marketing. Taking a look at creative examples like Mcdonalds’ “Nuffin like it” campaign and talking about our very own “Getting you down’t” campaign for our client City Taxis, targeting the Sheffield region. So, let’s not “mess a’bart”- let’s jump straight in. 

Regional marketing is achieved by focusing on two factors, aspects, and fundamentals: 

1. Location-
   Using location-based marketing to reach customers based on where they live. Whether the marketing collateral is online, offline or both- using tools like social media advertising research and testing we can pinpoint those customer journeys and highlight where to find them online. You also can’t go wrong with a classic billboard advertisement – if you have the budget of course.
2. Relevance-
   Providing relevant content and promotions based on the environment and the people in it and concentrating on factors such as: culture, weather, consumer attitudes and spending habits. Each region has its own personality, think of the “dressing gown vs housecoat” debate…Or the controversial topic of how you pronounce the words “scone” and “tongue”… We’re all different depending on where we come from, and that creates great targeting opportunities when it comes to marketing and connecting to people and their regional quirks.

The concept of truly ‘Integrated agency’ comes to life here at Fishtank. Although we’re based in the heart of Mirfield, our team members all come from different parts of the country (and the world… Say hey to our Polish queen Ola). From Huddersfield and Wakefield to as far as Surrey and Wales – we all have our differences, especially when it comes to the way we make our cups of tea 😉

A great regional campaign doesn’t always become apparent at first glance… Take Mcdonalds for example, their “Nuffin like it” campaign, isn’t over-engineered or too ‘in your face, in fact, it takes a second glance until we realise…Wow, that’s actually pretty clever. (and then the inner Digital Marketer inside you thinks, “damn, why didn’t I think of that)
In this particular campaign, Mcdonalds launched a series of advertisements based around their globally recognised ‘Mcmuffins’… Need we say more? Rolled out across various marketing channels, you’ve probably noticed this campaign pop up in your day to day.

Within this campaign, they target numerous audiences by creating relatable, humorous concepts that really connect the brand to the consumers. For example, one of the ads simply asks the renowned Yorkshire butty-shop dilemma- “Only question is, red or brown?”, and then there’s our favourite “Nuffin like it”. In this campaign, McDonald’s chose language as their tool to target a specific audience and its creative genius when it comes to targeting all thoseGod’s Own Country Yorkshire folk with their good’ol Yorkshire “Nuffin”, (or for those of you that live outside of the North, “Nothing”.)

Let’s be honest, the picture alone sells it- we’re already drooling and starting to scroll through Just Eat 🤤, but the personalisation of this advertisement is what really makes the nuffin-muffin irresistible. How special does it make you feel just for being Northern?

What makes a campaign like this so impactful, is the ability to become instantly relevant to its audience.. Let’s keep it real, we all know what a Mcdonalds breakfast consists of, and generally speaking, it doesn’t really need selling to us, we are already invested. By bringing in the element of personalisation, speaking out to a particular region really reminds you- Yeah, there is really ‘Nuffin like it’, I’m going to go grab myself a Maccies breakfast.” Not to mention the tongue in cheek humour – advertisements like these are what make up the playful and charismatic brand that Mcdonalds is today.

Talking of feeling playful, we recently launched our very own regional campaign with a very innovative client, City Taxis. This particular campaign, like all exciting projects, started with a team brainstorming session, in which all members of our patchwork agency family collaborated and bounced off each other’s creativity. From what started as a campaign based around the lifting of lockdown restrictions and getting back out into the world post-covid, soon turned into a real-feel regional focused campaign targeting the areas of Sheffield, Barnsley, Doncaster and Chesterfield.  

After splashing some Northern cliches and puns about, we narrowed it down to the use of regional dialect, building the campaign around the Sheffield-born “getting you back t’” and “getting you down’t”. This concept allowed us to roll it out and target specific areas within Yorkshire as well as zoom in on particular audiences with specific interests and hobbies like shopping and going to the pub. One pillar of the campaign focused on football fans- when football games FINALLY opened back up to stadium fans, we thought what a great way to advertise than by a “getting you back t’game” campaign in which we targeted local stadiums like Bramall Lane, Oakwell, Pride Park and many more. 

So, the digital team  came up with the campaign explorations – now we needed visuals that translated this to the audience. To no surprise, Head of Creative, Joe already had some innovative ideas in mind and Graphic Designer & Animator, Liam got to work to make them come to life in a way that spoke to the key demographic, rolling the concepts out across different media.

When complete, the roll outs of this campaign allowed us to target specific personalities and lifestyles, all in one single campaign, all while focusing on citytaxi’s key regions with the use of good ol’ Yorkshire slang.
Some of our favourites included encouraging Yorkshire folk to brave going out with a little bit of help from their friends at citytaxis, to get back to their favourite activities: “getting you back t’ gym – City taxis… getting you home when leg day is just too heavy”, and “getting you back out out – City Taxis…getting you there when your heels can’t”

This particular campaign was advertised in shopping malls, sporting events and across social media with a wholesome strap line that goes the extra mile: “Along for the ride”. Doesn’t that make you want to just jump in a taxi and drive off towards a new adventure?.

What we’re trying to say here is… You can really add a sense of personality, humour and relatability to your brand when you try approaching your key audiences with a regional marketing campaign. After all, we know how controversial the “breadcake” vs “barn” debate is. People can be extremely passionate about their dialect and capitalising on this feeling of belonging to this special, regional ‘secret club’ can be extremely beneficial for both global and local brands. Not to mention the brand exposure it prompts by getting people talking about how your brand spoke directly to them.  

So why not try a regional marketing campaign for yourself? Think about where your target audience is based, their interests, their hobbies and their lifestyles, and get thinking about how you can target them specifically in your next campaign.

If you need inspiration and splashing ideas, we can always lend a fin of creative direction.