TRANSFORMING SAINSBURY CAR PARKS
In July 2014 PopUpArena toured Scotland in advance of the Commonwealth games to deliver an INNOVATIVE PopUp Long Jump across a number of Sainsbury’s stores within Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling. Our arena build expertise required us to engineer a sense of crowd magic, transforming overnight an empty car park space into a branded sports arena, to capture experiences and memories for participants and spectators.
Commissioned by CSM Agency (part of the Chime Group), the Long Jump
provided a truly unique experience for Sainsbury’s customers to find out what it was like to sprint down the 20m long jump runway and launch themselves into a 8m 'IAAF approved' sand pit.
Prior to the tour, PopUpArena and the agency made site visits to each store to determine the appropriate methodology and assess the risks relevant to each location, this included taking account of access and available car park spaces to build on, movement of vehicle and pedestrians whilst the event was live, obstructions such as rain drains, car park lighting, trolley bays and access for emergency services and evacuation priorities..
Key to the transformation of the car parks was the RAPID overnight install and extract within just 4 hours. Each evening once the store was closed and the car park clear, our PopUpArena fleet of vehicles arrived with a crew of 8 people who then built the 30m x 15m arena before security would close the entire site down. The Arena components included 8 tonnes of high grade sand, 28 mtrs of pre-built runway and sand pit, runway performance surface, runway safety barriers, arena picket fencing and hospitality tents.
Rightly so, consistent high standards of production were demanded by the client, the store and CSM to create a real IMPACT at each site. PopUpArena did not fall short in any aspect of the contract and the campaign exceeded expectation at all the sites.
