METRO POP-UP CAFÉ

Client Feedback:

“It has been an absolute pleasure to work with you and your team. Your ideas were spot on and the execution exceeded all our expectations. Everyone here is loving your work and I very much hope we get to work with you again in the future.” METRO

Creative Event Brief:

Metro engaged Timebased to create a pop-up experience as part of a two week campaign called ‘Metro Delivers’. The duration of this event presented unique issues for any event company in terms of corporate event management services. We came up with the idea of a breakfast café to serve a complimentary breakfast to various media agencies in order to illustrate how Metro delivers responsive, high quality readership to its clients every day. The main objective was to make the media agencies keep Metro in mind when booking their clients’ media space.

A central space had to be used to fit the brand and experience for this creative event. The theme was urban, young, edgy and cool - traditional East London café meets trendy West London gastro. It was crucial that it had a pop-up feel rather than being a fully-fledged venue, offering a creative challenge for the event planners at Timebased.

Event Planning and Approach:

Timebased sourced an empty retail space near Bloomsbury Square in Central London with exposed brick walls, high ceilings and lots of natural light. The space’s original elements were kept in order to give an underground feel to the café but premium elements such as a black and white chequered floor and a slick bespoke service counter were added. Vinyls of ‘Metro Delivers’ with a fried egg motif were printed and applied to surfaces in the café from the glass window above the door to the red Vespa parked inside the café, which was available to win.

A montage of cool breakfast café moments from cult films such as Pulp Fiction, The Departed, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Amelie were run on a loop on plasma televisions. As event coordinators, we ensured guests could read Metro newspapers, hold meetings and enjoy their complimentary Metro breakfasts.

Event Management Results:

Timebased were able to bring their experience in the management of product launch events to bear in this event, albeit over a period of two weeks. The pop-up experience generated a 39% response rate from their target audience for face-to-face engagement, which Metro said was an amazing result. Sales results far exceeded targets in the quarter following the campaign. The pop-up nature proved to be an unique and interesting experience from an event planning perspective for us, while running a café for two weeks offered challenges not normally encountered in corporate event management. However, Timebased met all the challenges, with a result that exceeded Metro’s expectations. This was a truly unique and creative experiential event.