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'Umbrella Lane' Appears In Westmeath Town As Branding Push Continues

Tuesday, 19 July 2022 10:46

One street has been transformed into a new 'Instagramable' space.

After the success of the Niall Horan Mural, Mullingar Chamber moved on to their next project “Umbrella Lane”.

Meeting House Lane is currently being transformed in a beautiful 'Instagramable' space. The umbrellas were installed on Monday 18th July by Donohoe Engineering and the Mullingar Chamber Retail team are working on enhancing these features in the coming week.

Mullingar Chamber established a specialised retail team in mid-2021 to manage and co-ordinate the integration of Mullingar Chamber with the retailers of the town of Mullingar as well as to create consistent branding around the town and the leisure and hospitality and retail businesses in the town. The team consists of David Quirke [Wholesome Kitchen] and Aisling Coleman [Mullingar Chamber of Commerce].

The objective of this team is to increase footfall in Mullingar town by creating awareness and ensuring a consistent brand for Mullingar as a town.  Mullingar Chamber received a grant from Westmeath County Council [Economic Development, Enterprise and Tourism SPC] and commenced discussions with branding agencies to deliver on our objectives in this space.

The creative process with Studio Great let to them choosing the #LoveMullingar campaign as a tagline/hashtag and an M with a love heart in Purple and Yellow as the logo. The umbrellas represent the colours of the logo.

Strong branding increases the value of a location, provides direction and motivation, and will add to making Mullingar a quality destination in the Midlands and throughout Ireland.  

The branding represents people's perception of Mullingar, its retail and hospitality services, its reputation and how we advertise and market the town.  

The popularity of social networks, especially the visually focused Instagram platform, has created a need for 'Instagramable' spaces to attract visitors and entice them to spend time and money in the town as part of a wider tourism and consumer experience.  

These selfie-worthy spaces inspire visitors to share photos and videos of their experiences, creating invaluable word-of-mouth marketing of Mullingar and also fit in with some established 'Instagramable' images of the town, including Joe Dolan statue at Market Square and the Niall Horan Mural on Dominick Street.

As part of this process, Mullingar Chamber sought to identify areas of the town that would work well with this plan.  The one area they felt would work best for this was Meeting House Lane, the umbrellas will be a permanent feature but make be taken down for a period when construction begins on the lane. Mullingar Chamber encourage you to get out there and increase visuals of Mullingar on social under the #LoveMullingar hashtag.

Mullingar Chamber feel these outcomes will have positive knock-on effects for the town and the leisure, hospitality and retail businesses and assist in boosting in economic activity in these sectors as we recover from the pandemic in 2022 and beyond.

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