Hamleys: Christmas comes early
See the work
The Hamleys team’s launch of the brand’s Christmas in August event saw the “world’s favourite toystore” clean-up not just with 80 journalists from the long-leads through the door, but also with immediate impact: as every major national news outlet covered our predictions of the top festive gifts.
The event - the first of its kind that the store has held for some years - showcased the Hamley’s buyers’ top picks for the festive season. The team turned it into next-day news with a host of national print and broadcast journalists invited down.
Crews from BBC, SKY/five News and ITN scurried around the event doing interviews with senior Hamleys spokespeople. In addition, TimesTV, PA Multimedia and Associated Press TV were also out in force.
Meanwhile, journalists from the Daily Mail, The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, The Times, METRO, the Independent, Standard, Daily Express and Daily Mirror (who wrote the story twice) all pitched in to talk to buyers, retail directors and the ops director to get their takes on the top gifts for kids.
All delivered coverage in the next day’s papers and took the total number of pieces for the event up to around 50 – and they are still coming in.