Trendspotting with Showcase

Showcase, with 100 stores across the country, is Canada’s go-to destination for the trendiest gifts. Here’s how we spread news and demand for the 2020 holiday season’s most-wanted gifts – from TikTok sensations to exclusive toys and cozy items, available first and only at Showcase!

Strategic Objectives produced a 360° strategic communications program to build awareness that Showcase was the only Canadian retailer to stock all the latest TikTok trends and creature comforts needed to survive the pandemic’s first ever Christmas.

Canada’s most-wanted holiday gifts!

In 2020 Showcase trend scouts searched the world to offer the hottest holiday gifts for all Canadians, from kids to colleagues. It also created a unique CSR (corporate social responsibility) program to support Canada’s caterers, restauranteurs, and hospitality professionals hard-hit by the pandemic, by recruiting them to produce what Showcase predicted to be one of the season’s hottest, most coveted trends – the hot chocolate bomb. Strategic Objectives is proud to be the Showcase PR Agency of Record and conceived a newsworthy plan to position the retailer as Canada’s one-stop-shop for the hottest trends, and must-have holiday gifts.

Our challenge was two-fold

• Position Showcase as Canada’s destination for the world’s most sought-after gifts. From the trendiest toys, gizmos, and gadgets, to beauty, lifestyle, home, and wellness products. Our client was exclusively focused on getting mainstream media coverage.
• Recruit hospitality professionals to produce hot chocolate bombs, the latest TikTok trend. Create awareness and demand for hot chocolate bombs by leveraging social media hype to make mainstream news.

Objectives

1. Drive national brand awareness across English-speaking Canada
2. Generate copious mainstream print, digital and broadcast media coverage
3. Position Showcase as home to the hottest trends with more than 100+ stores and online shopping across Canada
4. Recruit Canadian hospitality professionals to participate in the Showcase CSR initiative to support the local manufacture and distribution of the hot chocolate bombs

Leverage the latest obsessions on TikTok to ‘Showcase’ the hottest holiday trends

Our integrated, buzzworthy PR plan distinguished Showcase from other Canadian retailers. We highlighted a variety of exclusive products, while shining light on its CSR initiative.

National Media Relations

Our proactive national media relations outreach positioned Showcase as the season’s top destination for holiday gifts. Lifestyle and consumer media, bloggers and tastemakers across the country, happily featured a variety of products.

National Media Tour

We engaged a variety of trusted high-profile, media personalities to go on national TV to demonstrate the amazing Showcase offerings, including its exclusive, made-in-Canada SweetBombs Hot Chocolate Bomb.

Showcase TikTok Mailers

We created a TikTok mailer for mainstream media to give them the opportunity to experience holiday’s hottest trends. In addition to hot chocolate bombs, it included Juicy Jelly Splooshies, a brand-new TikTok challenge featuring a tropical candy that explodes in your mouth! The challenge had already garnered more than 2.5 billion views.

Please Contact us if your brand wants to cut through the clutter and make trending, national news that differentiates you in the Canadian marketplace. We’d love to help support your brand by creating an innovative PR strategy that inspires and changes minds.