Crown Decorating Centres

Putting Crown Decorating Centres on the Map

The Challenge

Crown Decorating Centres (CDCs) have one of the largest specialist decorating networks in the UK and Ireland, with more than 170 branches serving painters, decorators, and wider trade professionals. Yet despite this strong physical presence, awareness and consideration were surprisingly low.

The brief highlighted a clear disconnect between the scale of the network and the perception of its accessibility.

The research uncovered the underlying driver: location matters. More than price, more than product range, the trade values convenience. They want to get in, get what they need, and get back to the job fast. But with many CDCs positioned deep within industrial estates, decorators often didn’t know a branch was just around the corner. The physical proximity existed, but the mental availability did not.

The challenge was simple on paper but complex in practice:

Make Crown Decorating Centres feel close, visible and unmissable wherever decorators are working.

And do it in a way that cuts through a trade audience bombarded daily with functional messages, offers and product claims.

The Approach

Our idea started with a universal truth:

“You’re never far from a CDC.”

This became the foundation of a campaign built around clarity, simplicity and high recognisability. We created a distinctive visual device anchored in the world of decorating: a paint roller masking and revealing a surface to form a location pin.

A symbol decorators instantly understand.

A shape they can’t ignore.

And a reminder that great supplies and expert advice are closer than they think.

This visual language became the campaign’s signature expression across every environment:

• Out of Home, positioned near trade parks, driving routes and industrial zones, providing high visibility where decorators naturally move.
• Digital and social formats where motion design brought the “reveal” moment to life, creating a dynamic and scroll-stopping visual cue.
• Print designed with clean lines, bold colour blocking and directional cues that seamlessly guided audiences into the nearest branch.

Every touchpoint worked hard to deliver the same message: the distance between decorators and their local CDC is shorter than they realise. And with expert staff, trade essentials and trusted brands waiting behind every door, that short distance is worth the trip.

Our holistic approach ensured consistency, impact and effortless recall — wherever decorators encountered the brand.

The Results

The campaign reframed Crown Decorating Centres in the minds of the trade, replacing the perception of “hard to find” with “always close by.”

The signature visual device became a distinctive brand asset, strengthening recognition and helping CDC stand out in high-clutter environments.

By making location the hero — and delivering it through a design system rooted in the world of decorators — the campaign successfully improved mental availability, increased awareness of local branches, and reinforced CDCs as the go-to trade destination for painters and decorators across the UK and Ireland.