With a strong background in communications and getting events and functions off the ground, Felicity Young predicted the trend of the rise in vintage styling and has been able to capitalise on it with her promo agency Loco Group.
“A born fossicker, I have had my head in second hand treasure troves since a young teen,” Young told Anthill, about her motivation to go specifically for the retro vibe. “In our early days I would often use some of my own vintage bits and pieces on events and they always struck a chord and got a reaction.”
“So instead of locking it all away, I had another look at my favourite pieces and along with the influence of magazines like our friends at frankie, I thought we were onto something.”
A retro style approach to modern-day promotion…
“Although our activations don’t exclusively have a vintage look and feel, the purchase of Betsy, our vintage caravan, definitely put us front and centre in that vibe,” Young remarked.
And it turns out that Betsy has become the darling of Loco Group. Young attributes the caravan’s appeal to the fact that “she is actually old and creates a happy place”.
She revealed that frankie magazine, for example, is a huge fan of Betsy. They have used her as a prop, a photo booth and a dressing room at their market Emporium.
Loco Group also uses vintage style Hype Bikes to generate awareness on the streets. Think riders in 50’s style outfits on old school bikes towing along mini billboards.
Reid Cycles in Melbourne recently engaged the Hype Bikes to get the word out to potential customers about a big sale they were having. Loco Group peddlers rode around the ‘uni/student’ end of town, which was close to the sale location.
Young says, that in a great example of the old and the new working perfectly well together, the people would pop out their phones and look up the sale website.
Rolling out over 150 events per year, for organisations of all sizes, Loco Group has now expanded beyond Melbourne, where they started, to Sydney.
…without ignoring modern technology
Loco Group may look like something from the set of Mad Men, but they are also pretty savvy when it comes to modern communication.
“While we think it’s really important to create face-to-face brand engagement, we also understand the importance and power of social media and online marketing,” Young explained, also pointing out that Loco group also uses social media to promote itself.
“We make sure we take lots of photos of the activations and events for our clients to use on their various social media outlets. This way they can engage a much wider audience in the experience,” she added.
“Often we take old style Polaroid cameras to events and take photos of people engaging with the activity. We physically give the people the photos as a little momento,” Young further revealed. “With so many of our photos these days in JPEG format, we find people really love to have a photo they can touch.”
