Where Polus City Center ends, VIVO! starts – rebranding of the love brand

Project summary

Polus City Center, the first shopping and entertainment center in Bratislava, which presented a revolution in shopping at the beginning of the millennium, changed its appearance, philosophy, offer and name after almost twenty years! Rebirth of VIVO! Bratislava was accompanied by an extensive PR campaign, which helped to change the identity of the well-known brand without the feeling that the customer is missing something. On the contrary, we have managed to create an atmosphere of enthusiasm and expectancy. The Agency has shown that it perfectly knows the market as well as its concerns and opportunities and it has also helped to communicate the strengths of the project for an exceptional result.

Goal

Visitors have known Polus for almost two decades. During that time, it became an icon of Bratislava and therefore, with the announcement of the planned changes, a wave of fears of the unknown logically came. However, many things have changed in twenty years, so we had to change as well. The aim of the project was to arouse the attention and interest of the renewed shopping center via media coverage and to partially return it to the attention of visitors who stopped visiting it.

Strategy and plan

The aim was to minimise the fear of change in longtime visitors of the center and to attract new ones. We built a communication plan on the effort to rebuild the local community in the Bratislava-Nové Mesto district. The center of this community ought to be the recently refurbished shopping and community center. By combining an open communication about planned changes and thematic articles highlighting the importance of the community, we achieved that the visitors forgot about all the inconveniences connected with the refurbishment and they actually looked forward to what was to come.

Realization

1. Press releases
To minimise the fear of change, we needed to sustain a high level of information and transparence. That’s why we issued 11 press releases in just 6 months before the grand opening ceremony.

2. PR articles in online and print media
To support the enthusiasm for the new shopping center concept, we published 35 paid PR articles among them for instance an interview with the designer of the new center, an article about the importance of the local communities, an article describing all the changes and an invitation to the grand opening ceremony.

3. Press conference with the new logo unveiling
We have prepared a press conference for influencers and news and local regional media from Bratislava. At this meeting, IMMOFINANZ representatives together with the former and current mayor of the Bratislava-Nové Mesto district recalled the cultural significance of Polus in the life of the district and they introduced the future plans for VIVO! We festively exposed the new logo on the façade for the twenty participating journalists and the public. Furthermore, we showed them around completely new parts of the center.

4. TV reports
We have prepared four TV reports of the grand opening ceremonial, which was accompanied by a rich music programme.

Results

We managed 303 media outputs in online and print media and also in TV, of which 257 were spontaneous and they reached almost 5,3 millions of readers (Newton Media). The quality of the outputs is attested by the fact that almost half of them (125) came from the audited media (AIM monitor). However, we consider the fact that the attendance of the center has rapidly increased and the inhabitants of Bratislava started spontaneously using the new title – VIVO! Bratislava – as our biggest achievement.