Tik Tok’s fine but you can’t beat old fashioned posters - Kevin Buckle

Taylor Swift x Billy Butcher poster – The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

My main reason for being wary of TikTok was due to customers who would come in the shop asking for a band simply because they had heard 20 seconds of one of their songs on the platform.

And while I am old enough to remember when people asked for songs because they had heard them on the radio, there is a huge difference between liking a song you have heard in full and wanting to hear more and at best just hearing the chorus of a song and deciding they are your new favourite band.

Thankfully for the purposes I was using it for, it normally involved some nice images of one of the street poster displays, with unsurprisingly Taylor Swift playing in the background.

One thing is for sure and that is far too much emphasis is given to digital marketing at the expense of more traditional methods. For instance we were allowed to put two banners at the side of our shop visible from the Waverley Bridge entrance and to those approaching the shop having entered via the Waverley Steps.

The banners quite simply show a selection of some of our biggest selling albums covering the various genres we sell. We also have a poster with the same album covers in the food court. Both work wonderfully when it comes to attracting people of all ages into the shop.

On the other hand there are digital screens around the centre and I guarantee should we use those to advertise what we have in the shop it would have a minimal effect.

Used properly posters and social media work hand in hand because people take photos of the posters and then post them on social media.

This, of course, is why the campaign for the Butcher Billy Taylor Swift inspired posters have worked so well.

In the coming weeks there will a competition to win one of the large Correx prints used in the exhibition that will involve both the street posters and social media and will hopefully show how both still have a part to play in promotion.

Billy is certainly active on TikTok and as he says, nobody can just be an artist these days they need to be a content creator too.

But I think it may be a while before I start actively posting myself. For now it means I can monitor all the reaction to the posters and exhibition and certainly from a sales viewpoint it has already been a huge success, with three of the cards selling out and two of the six available T-shirts needing to be reordered.

The secret stairs in the centre that house the exhibition can currently only be accessed from within, but from the start of next year when there will be more activity on the roof, the stairs will be open offering another entrance to Waverley Market.

With Sostrene Grene due to open on the Waverley Steps at the end of November and Tinderbox Coffee now settled in on Waverley Bridge it will be great to see such an attractive entrance added to the mix.