Our Work
Following a hugely successful and award-winning Christmas campaign at Victoria Place, Woking in 2022 (results can be found here, we proposed building on ‘The Forgotten Toys’ initiative in 2023 to make it even bigger and better than before, with one of our core objectives being to increase toy donations by 10% and receive over 3,000 toys.
Instead of the toys being donated to the grotto (as we did in 2022), this time we setup a separate ‘Toy Donation Station’, transforming an un-utilised unit at Victoria Place into an enticing space for families to donate and enjoy. An enchanting campaign narrative was developed, bringing to life Santa’s Chief Elf Sparkle who was in the station collecting all the toys. A fully immersive experience was created in the unit taking families on a journey from donating their toys to ‘Sparkle’ and receiving a kindness certificate for their efforts, to having an opportunity to press the button on Sparkle’s kindness counter. This totalled the number of toys donated, all whilst being surrounded by a display of magical toys.
We launched Victoria Place’s very own Christmas bear, ‘Freddy the Festive Bear’. We incentivised the toy donations drive by offering a free teddy for every 100th toy donation received. Freddy also came to life as a mascot who roamed around to enliven the centre on Saturdays during the event period.
A range of toy-related activities were also part of the campaign, including meeting Santa in his toy workshop and ‘The Forgotten Toys’ storytelling.
Over 8,200 toy donations were received across the whole campaign, resulting in an 186% increase on 2022 compared to our target of a 10% increase. The social channels gained a total reach of 80,334.