With footfall expected to rise, the need to regenerate, repurpose and enliven town centres is keenly felt by Local Authorities, commercial property owners and retailers, looking to capitalise on the projected resurgence, writes Esther Worboys, Activate Placemaking Manager and High Streets Task Force Expert.
Retail sales enjoyed a springtime resurgence, with growth in high street sales from April to June making it the best three months on record. Sales were up 28.4% from a year earlier and were 10.4% higher than in 2019, according to the British Retail Consortium, buoyed by June’s sunny weather, the Euro 2020 tournament and the vaccination programme.
PM Boris Johnson’s removal of restrictions on 19 July delivered a further boost to retail. And the latest forecast shows footfall in non-food retail stores will continue to strengthen over summer in the UK, reaching almost three quarters (74.5%) of its 2019 level in Q3 2021. The figures, from Ipsos Retail Traffic Index, show that recovery was strong over Q2.
The rapid rollout of vaccinations, steps that property managers and retailers have put in place to safeguard their customers and colleagues, a release of pent-up demand, and consumers spending household savings from the past year, have all contributed to retail rallying during April, May and into June, say Ipsos retail analysts.
Acknowledging that shoppers will continue to use both online and physical shopping channels, analysts highlighted the return of consumer appetite for shopping as a leisure activity. Dr Tim Denison, head of retail analytics and insight at Ipsos, said: “Consumer confidence continues to re-build, now standing at its highest level since the first lockdown, employment levels remain buoyant, and Britain is rediscovering its fondness for one of its most popular social pastimes.”
Now more than ever, the need to regenerate, repurpose and enliven town centres is keenly felt by Local Authorities, commercial property owners and retailers, as they look to capitalise on the projected resurgence towards in-person experiences including recreational shopping.
Local authorities are taking an active role in the repositioning of town centre environments, with collaboration between the public and private sector increasingly proving a force for positive change. The ultimate needs of town centre and high street users should inform thinking at the centre of planning, design, and management, and build positive relationships with local stakeholders. This creates a sense of belonging and establishes the location’s role in the community.
Activate expertise to rejuvenate public spaces and deliver footfall boost
Activate works closely with local authorities and public-private partnerships to provide placemaking consultancy advice as part of a variety of town regeneration projects. By researching the demographics of an area, engaging with stakeholders such as local businesses, residents’ groups, and with market traders, their evaluations form the basis of a target retail mix. The Activate team collaborates to provide potential layout and design of any future schemes, supported by financial projections.
Based on local research and insight, the Activate placemaking team provides concepts, feasibility advice, and detailed business planning for local authorities for their regeneration options. Typical projects include master-planning of town centre mixed-use schemes, the feasibility analysis of town centre market re-locations and concepts for the re-purposing of vacant commercial space.
The High Street Task Force expert view
Where there is scope for achieving unfulfilled potential in town centres and high streets, Activate is well-placed to offer key advice, drawing from the team’s broad experience, which includes insight gained through my role as a High Street Task Force expert.
In this role, High Street Task Force experts visit targeted town centres and high streets, where they work with community leaders to identify key issues hampering successful transformation, and ways to address these. Experts also consult with local authorities and stakeholders to help solve complex challenges, which may also include running workshops and brokering relationships within the local community.
The idea is to unlock the resource that already exists in the town, using a fresh perspective to break down barriers in order to implement the project, while also leveraging a wider base of skills and understanding garnered from experience on projects rolled out in towns across the country. It’s about facilitating efforts between stakeholders such as business leaders, the local authority and community groups; so they can overcome past hurdles to move forward and deliver their own local solutions that are right for their town.
Carefully created and managed partnerships, where lessons learned are used to create added value for town centres and high streets, can deliver social and economic outcomes, not just real estate development. As the Activate team demonstrates, when local government and the private sector work in collaboration, with guidance from placemaking experts, the results lead to places that people can be proud of.
Levelling-up towns across the regions
This contemporary approach to partnering is good for the economic and social vibrancy of towns, and plays into the government’s levelling-up agenda, which seeks to improve skills, create jobs, enhance townscapes, improve access to public services, and increase local decision-making responsibilities.
The Activate team is also collaborating with Scotland’s Towns Partnership, enabling Local Authorities to work in partnership with town centre property owners to access available funding, of which they may previously have been unaware. Making progress towards levelling up is about removing regional inequities and finding suitable pathways for everybody.
Of course, simply agreeing a public-private partnership doesn’t guarantee a successful outcome. For these collaborations to work, they rely on strong leadership, a clear vision, quality and continuity of teams. There is a clear requirement for a bedrock of thorough research and preparation, and trust between partners.
It seems that significant challenges including the pandemic, Brexit and climate change have not stifled enthusiasm for town centre regeneration. The rise of localism proves that people want to feel safe in – and proud of – the places where they live, work, play, study, do business, and shop.
In fact, there is a growing appetite to bolster local infrastructure so that towns are resilient enough to withstand further economic, environmental, and social challenges that may be just over the horizon.
By Esther Worboys, Activate Placemaking Manager and High Streets Task Force Expert.
A quick blink into the sunlight after more than three months of lockdown shows that predictions abound for a rush back to shops and restaurants.
As consumers shake off lockdown fatigue and prepare for a summer of social activity, pent-up demand for a return to normality is set to spark a retail footfall rise of 48% when non-essential retail reopens in England from April 12, according to Springboard. The forecast increase means footfall will be 128% higher than the same week in 2020, although it will still remain 62% below 2019 levels.
In shopping centres and retail parks, which have maintained a steady flow of footfall during lockdowns due to their higher proportion of essential retail offerings, footfall is predicted to rise by 46% and 26% respectively in the first week of reopening, says Springboard.
At the end of the first two lockdowns, footfall rose by more than 40%, yet greater increases are expected this time due to the success of the vaccination programme and the concurrent opening of retail and hospitality.
As shopping centre and retail park managers looked to keep their brands alive, they turned to destination marketing as an essential tool. And in the absence of live events, they have pivoted towards digital marketing and social media. Even in the case of significantly reduced marketing budgets, centre managers have been able to grab a bigger bang for their buck by leveraging the expertise of Activate’s Destination Marketing team.
How destination marketing will boost retail rebound for 2021
Many centre managers and retail real estate owners have reapportioned budgets to focus on digital engagement through social media. Their properties have benefited accordingly by remaining front of mind, and front of wallet, for consumers. Our Destination Marketing team works to research and present a menu of covid-secure promotional options, from which individual centres and retailers can select.
Campaigns around Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Easter have kept customers interested, with online gift guides and creative video content designed to drive visitors to shopping centres and retail parks. A mix of content has been developed for a range of platforms, including animation and video for Instagram Reels, in partnership with individual retailers and sponsors, for promotions which are activated on site. These have included competitions to win an M&S Easter hamper, handouts of single red roses, chocolates, branded face coverings or hand sanitiser giveaways.
In one cost-effective campaign, designed to appeal to a regional audience for Vangarde Shopping Park, York, the marketing team achieved more than 17,000 engagements and 1700 comments from one single, simple post. ‘What do you call this?’ with the hashtags #Yorkshire and #Vangarde showed images of simple items such as a bread roll and a bath robe, and invited comments on their different regional names. This kind of engaging content, which has encouraged communities to use destination social media platforms, has kept the brand and its retailers alive and top of mind during challenging times, when many stores have had to remain closed. The key is to get online communities talking and create the intent of physically visiting the properties at the heart of any creative material or activation at some point in the future. Onsite teams across a range of properties have also been encouraged to create their own ‘welcome back’ video content, showing they are ready for customers to return.
Campaigns to suit properties large and small
Our Destination Marketing team is equipped to deliver projects to suit the needs and budgets of a variety of schemes, and work is designed to fit the demographic of shoppers and retailers within each property. While some schemes have benefitted from multi-channel marketing, incorporating radio and print campaigns, others have maximised a retailer-sponsorship approach. For example, when delivering messages around the covid-secure aspects of each site, the team has built in short, sharp, sponsorship tags for affiliate retail brands to ensure that they are driving the impact for those retailers that are open and ready for custom.
Many properties that feature restaurants with al fresco dining areas have been revamping these to be covid-secure. Here, we’ve worked directly with the restaurants to promote their rejuvenated outdoor space and used the content to include instructions about making reservations in the new seating areas, in order to drive bookings.
Looking ahead, the team is optimistic about real-life events at shopping centres and retail parks returning later in the year. In the meantime, it is also delivering marketing activations that provide social value, such as the #nochildgoeswithout campaign being run at The Core in support of a Leeds charity that aims to give every child in need an Easter egg.
As the big reopening on April 12th approaches, and customers become keen to visit bricks-and-mortar destinations as a leisure activity once more, it’s time to make sure all that footfall is heading in the right direction: towards your property.
By Michelle Atack, Digital Marketing and Events Associate, Activate
To find out more about the Activate Destination Marketing Service visit > https://bit.ly/3DhY11s
If you have a retail scheme, office campus or business park where the marketing needs to work harder, contact either Michelle Atack or Andrew Sparrow.
As the majority of retail destinations develop their remobilisation plans, the primary focus will be how to introduce effective social distancing measures that reflect both government advice and consumer expectations.
A different customer experience
The outcome of this will, in the medium term, create a very different customer experience. It will require intensive onsite management and an integrated communications plan to ensure potential customers are aware of the restrictions ahead of their visit. This will manage their expectations and provide clarity around the procedures they will need to follow, well in advance.
At the same time retailers, will be looking to landlords to support their re-opening. As the number of retailers opening and level of enlivenment within each retail location increases, we would expect footfall to follow. Whilst this represents a positive step towards a return to some form of normality, this also presents a number of challenges in managing social distancing procedures. How queue management is implemented to cope with customer volume in the mall areas, for example.
An alternative marketing focus
Balancing safety and wellbeing with customer entertainment and experience comes to the fore here. Retailers’ expectations and centre management objectives might not align as they had previously. Ordinarily, the objective of increasing footfall and animating the retail environment would the priority of marketing strategies. For now the approach will have to be modified, most certainly phased. The focus will be to maintain footfall through a marketing and communication strategy which avoids peaks and utilises digital channels for many of the locations usual experiential activities. All in the context of future marketing budgets being (rightly) challenged more rigorously, with landlords looking for economies of scale across their portfolios whilst still retaining the individuality of each location.
A phased approach
Currently the Activate team are working with clients to create a phased, cost effective marketing and communications programme. Previous budgets and creative campaigns are being reviewed for cost, ability to be adapted and impact on footfall and customer experience. Phase 1 – Inform and Reassure, may well last for some time and focus solely on delivering H&S information, social distancing guidelines and welcoming customers back. As we move forward, Phases 2 and 3 will broaden the messaging with a view to increasing frequency of visits, variety of retailer content and offline experiential.
The phased plan and the accompanying content will be one of our key tools as we balance the desire to increase footfall while meeting social distancing during remobilisation.
By Andrew Sparrow, Director of Placemaking, Activate
To find out more about the Activate Destination Marketing Service visit > https://bit.ly/3DhY11s
If you have a retail scheme, office campus or business park where the marketing needs to work harder, contact either Michelle Atack or Andrew Sparrow.