'Tis the Season for Placemaking

Featuring Meagan Wakefield and Brianna Taylor
Thursday 10 December 2020

SL:
Hello and welcome to Talking Property with CBRE. This is a podcast in which our team of experts share the commercial real estate insights. My name is Suzette Lamont, the Regional Director of Client Solutions in the Pacific and I'm your host for today's episode. 

Over the next little bit we’ll be talking about seasonal placemaking and how buildings have adapted to make the holiday season safe, fulfilling and economically viable during a pandemic. I'm joined today by two special guests. Meagan Wakefield, our Regional Director of Retail Property Management in the Pacific and Brianna Taylor, Customer Experience Lead for Host in the Pacific. Thank you so much for joining me, ladies.

MW:
Thank you, Suze. It's great to be here and an exciting topic to talk about today.

BT:
Yeah, thank you, Suze. I'm really looking forward to talking about placemaking with you and Meagan. 

SL:
How exciting, all right, well, let's get going! 

Look, we're here to talk about seasonal placemaking, and I guess the relationship between Christmas and our CBDs or our downtown or our city districts is deeply rooted, and it's pretty timeless. In most cities, the CBD is where we gather, we unite, celebrate and for most of the businesses in the area, it's pretty profitable, and it's pretty productive and always critical to the year’s success. But as we know, this holiday season is going to post some challenges. Customer behaviour has been impacted by both real and perceived consequences of interacting and sharing spaces with others and new regulations have changed how owners organize and manage their spaces. 

So, I guess my first question will be to you, Brianna. I want to know what we can expect to see if our office spaces this holiday season and what can we do to ensure that people stay safe as they look together and celebrate.

BT:
Yeah, great question Suze, I couldn't agree more with you about seasonal placemaking and these cultural key calendar dates as being really timeless. And I think that this year, more than ever, it's important that we still hold on to that and grow it possibly more than we even have previous years. I think that sparking joy and little moments of magic and creating opportunities for people to connect back with place and back with each other is fundamental. 

SL: 
I’m so desperate for sparking joy, I love that Bri. 

BT:
I think we're all desperate for it and for us as Placemakers, I think that it's important to drive that. So, you know, there were some mutterings of saying, you know “this year’s been so different to other years, maybe we don't do seasonal placemaking”, we certainly have, we've just done it in a slightly different way to make sure that it is safe.

Firstly, I think we need to think about how we can connect people and create shared experience, not necessarily through bunching hundreds of people together in a room for a Christmas party because we can't but in other clever, safe and ambient ways. So, for us, we've taken a real sensory experience and try to create a sense of surprise and interest and spark conversation. So, we have put a lot of effort into decorations, for example but instead of just, you know, dusting off the plastic tree, we've gone and supported and parted with artists. So, 1 Dennison, an incredible premium grade asset in North Sydney, has partnered with Bic Tieu. She's an object and jewellery artist, and she has custom designs these Christmas decorations and then provided information about the back story for them, the inspiration. Customers can have the opportunity to ask questions about them, we’ve had had florists come in and dress the trees with real Flora it’s all dried and preserved again, this sort of thing is really out of the box, and it means that it's not just wallpaper - people stop talk about it, talk to their colleagues about it and it creates that moment. We're pumping pine tree scent through the lobby, for example, that's really grabbed people's attention. So, there are these little things that we can do as people just pass through safely. They're not necessarily congregating or anything like that, but they're still having that that shared experience and it's completely COVID safe.

SL:
I absolutely love that, Bri and for someone who visited you, that pine tree smell is just magnificent and really changes the whole way you feel and your mood as you walk into that space so very well done to you and your landlord Winton. 

Meagan, the next question is going to be for you. I want to talk about technology. I'd prefer not to use it anymore. I don't think I've had a laptop or an iPad or a phone out of my hand or a Zoom out of my face for the last 12 months. But I want you to think about how your retail landlords can use technology and maybe even social media, too better engage with their shoppers this Christmas.

MW:
Yeah, and look just touching on a couple of things Bri said there that we've absolutely done in the retail space to bring in that digital side as well. It's, you know, it's Christmas and holiday season it's just the most wonderful time of the year and I know this year it's so desperately needed, and I love the fact that we can have an opportunity to still connect with people. I think a lot of people around the world would say, even in the lockdown that we've been through, we feel more connected in some ways with people that we know and we love than we have before, because we've been able to speak to them on Zoom, we've discovered this fabulous new technology that we can utilize and retail is just no different to that. It's an adaptation and luckily for retail, we're good at adapting, and we've done it for many decades and since the dawn of time, effectively. So, you know, we're seeing it all over the place. It's so great to see you know that Santa experience is even still in the shopping centres, that we didn't really feel like we were going to have it and some of it is via the virtual reality digital technology that you can utilize. Some landlords are doing things like digital scavenger hunts moving people around shopping centre. So, we're not congregating with doing things very safely. Social distancing is extremely important, but I mean, I think one thing we've absolutely learnt if nothing else this year in retail land is if you aren't on the digital train, you're probably going to miss the bus altogether because you have to be involved in it and it is part of the way we do retailing. It's no longer something to be a little bit cautious of, or wary ff. It's a part of what we do every single day in retail and absolutely embracing it is what we do I think, best in this industry. So, yes, digital is important and it's so great to see us being able to do it.

SL:
Yeah, and I think for digital to really move into that world of now being able to get that full restaurant experience at home, not just order your coffee. That's really been a huge change that I've looked at during COVID. What’s Christmas dinner going to look like for us this year Meagan?

MW:
Look and if I'm anything to go by as an avid retail shopper and all about preparation that is key to a successful Christmas day. I've got my online orders in with my local produce retailers already for collection. So it is that and I hate to use this works is a little out of date, but that Omni Channel is 100% happening in the world. All our retailers, in fact have got on board with being able to digitize what they're doing. Ordering systems its straight through an online system, it's very interactive. Unfortunately, it made me spend more than I wanted to, but I think that probably the reasoning behind doing it and you know what? This is great for retail because we're spreading out that fresh food spend that was normally done in the last week of shopping. Suddenly, you got people like me shopping in November for it, and of course, we're going to top up. So, we're going to see a great, like a huge influx of spend in that space, you know, and every sort of retailer is doing the same. So, you know that restaurant experience is different this year, but such a better way more organized, hopefully more stress free. Well, that's what I'm going for anyway and a magical Christmas day to top off a pretty hard year. 

SL:
That sounds so wonderful and isn't it funny how our conversations with friends have changed from what book did you read last to what website are you on to be able to get your digital experience? At least that's how I'm finding it with my friends at the moment Meagan.

MW: 
Absolutely.

SL:
So, Brianna, you're all about the world of office and I know that office landlords of being really thinking about clever ways, digital ways, perhaps to be thinking about their building communities, in what would generally have been a pretty social time, you know, Christmas parties on all that that goes with them. What are you seeing happening this year?

BT:
Look, it's interesting, because for me to answer that question, I think that it springs off a lot of what Megan was saying about leveraging digital technologies. For us, it's not necessarily about taking everything offline, but it's about using technology to ease processes in the physical space. So, for example, you know we can still have you know, our bars, lobby bars, for example, doing Christmas drinks and doing some Christmas parties. But we just have to be really careful about how many people are there, or we could still have workshops but we need to you know, make sure that we're capping it at a certain number and checking people in and being really diligent about that and that's where the Host App, the CBRE Host App can really be leveraged and is being leveraged in buildings. More than ever, having kind of ticketed events is really important being able to have a system that can cap the number of people attending, manage cancelations, have waitlist etcetera, is really fruitful. 

We're doing a little Christmas wreath workshop. So, with the florist that actually designed A with our decorations they're doing a hands-on workshop so the community can create their own little mini versions of that, you know, very capped numbers. So we were able to utilize the CBRE Host that people could booking and it booked out in three minutes Suze, can you believe? 

SL: 
Wow!

BT: 
But then we can check everyone in. So, this whole like checking in, checking out, bookings, in case someone's left now, that way at least it can go to the next person. That's really being leveraged, and you know, if we want to look for silver linings with how behaviour has changed this year, QR codes and checking in and reservations has really normalized.

I think that it is an apt time for the commercial sector to jump on that and go. Okay, people are used to booking, people are used to checking in with QR codes. How can we integrate this into our restaurants, lobbies, our co-working spaces are wellness amenities, etcetera.

SL:
Clever point Bri. I mean, I was thinking that QR codes may have eventually gone the way of the dinosaurs and are easy to use as I now have experienced it, but it's really come into its full, hasn't it? 

BL: 
Yeah, they’re back in!

SL:
So, look, I'm thinking about my Aussie summer. I'm thinking about my outdoor spaces and really outdoor spaces, open air, the ability to spread out has never been more important than it has really during COVID, and I guess for me, it's not Christmas until I've watched Love Actually. In fact, I made my son watch it with me Jaipur last year that's how important it is to me. So of course, I'm thinking about my outdoor Christmas experience and being in that cinema outdoor cinema in the Aussie summer. Meagan, a question for you, other than that, how else can we embrace the outdoors to safely gather for these events that we have in the wonderful world of retail?

MW:
Yeah and you know, it's one of those things that we’ve got. We're lucky to have space where we have retail, we've got those car park areas so we can still do these event activations, and we're seeing it come through, especially in our largest centres, where they really are doing those you know, outdoor movie nights with family and friends, socially distanced and being able to make sure we've got some really great Christmas activities. I've seen some really funky sort of Santa with his reindeer events that we can do at the front of the car park. It's all still happening. 

I think what we'll see coming through this season is a real push for post holidays and I still can't holidays going into January as we all do in Australia with the beautiful summer weather. We're going to see that activation happening out in the car parks with all sorts of events, you know, festivals are coming back online. I know we've had some great big sporting events happen with some huge capacity State of Origin for the Queenslanders and the New South Walers. We've had those big events with some huge crowd capacity. So, we're starting to see crowds come back in a certain fashion and absolutely we're going to have some activations happening in those spaces. 

SL:
And when are we going to see Megan, backyard cricket happening at my local shopping centre?

MW:
Look, we can only hope maybe with not a traditional cricket ball. Maybe with the softer, safety first focus ball, I won't be volunteering for that cricket is not my strength sport, I am really great at running oranges, though. So, if I’m needed for that hit me up on the CBRE website. I'm happy to run oranges at anyone’s event. But absolutely those types of activities are going to become, really important, especially as we're seeing some really high activity in terms of customer numbers coming through our neighbourhood centres. People are going to want to see these events pushed out to their local community so that they can have access to these events and, you know, great sort of services in those centres as well. So, we're doing some really exciting stuff. We've got a wonderful CBRE marketing team, for shopping centres around the country. We’re doing some really great summer events, so yeah, absolutely it's a huge part of what we do.

SL:
Amazing. So, look, we've heard about natural scents, we've heard about beautiful, experiential Christmas displays we've heard about going online, we've heard about the fact that I can order my in entire Christmas dinner and have that experience restaurant quality from one of Meagan's retailers. We've gone outside, we're watching cinema, we're having cricket games, we’re enjoying each other in that environment – Bri and Meagan, anything else that you want to add to our seasonal placemaking? 

BT:
Suze, I think one thing that's maybe sparked some change as well with people have been working from home they're very used to now being around their Children a lot more, there's a lot more kind of bleeding between the home life and the work life. I think something that we might see that when we are doing those activations or placemaking back in the office back in the commercial sector, that people want to involve their families. I think that we're going to see that, I think that's going to be a trend for 2021 and seeing not only how we cater for the worker, but how we cater for their husbands, their wives and their children.

SL:
Maybe not if you have very old teenage Children, I'm rather sick of mine and they're rather sick of me but for those with little children, I can see that attraction. Meagan, children have always been part of a shopping centre experience. Do you agree with that then?

MW:
Absolutely. I think you know what's beautiful about this holiday season is that the magic of Christmas is coming back into our centres. It was a little bit generic for a while there, and you could really feel that old Christmas spirit coming through. People are 100% as Bri just said, more focused on their families and their friends than they've ever been before, you know, rightly or wrongly, this is, you know, it's come back to the home and where it should be. So, our centres have to (and they are) adapting to what that is, and it is about focusing on making sure we're catering for all of their needs and all of their wants, at all times of day. Because one thing that I can say that has absolutely happened is shopping behaviours have changed. And that's you know, I guess the crux of off this last point is not only are seasonal shopping behaviours have changed, but our overall shopping hours throughout the day have changed so we've just got to make sure that we're ready for customers at any time of any day, and we're making that experience that seasonal experience, that magic of Christmas come through at all times.

SL:
Oh, that sounds great and look, I'd like to wish you both happy holidays. I hope you get a rest over this lovely time and enjoy some sunshine out in the beautiful Australian outdoors. 

So, thank you so much both Meagan and Brianna for joining me today. I think it's pretty fair to say that the holiday season will look and feel really different for most of us in 2020. However, there are big opportunities for landlords and management teams to innovate, to be creative with how they engage audiences and for landlords and retailers to succeed in winning the hearts and, of course, the wallets of their shoppers. Build communities will be bold and don't be afraid to take risks while ensuring a safe environment that offers a unique experience that can’t be delivered elsewhere. 

If you liked this episode and you would like to check out more, please visit cbre.com.au/talking-property or subscribe through Spotify and Apple podcasts and from all of us at CBRE, we would like to wish you a safe and happy holiday season. 

Until next time.