A brief history: Who is Westfield?
Now known as “Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield SE” after a 2018 acquisition - It’s recent history originates with the merger of two separate shopping centre operators: Unibail (founded in France in 1968) and Rodamco Europe (founded in the Netherlands in 1999), which joined forces in 2007. Unibail-Rodamco then acquired Australian shopping centre operator Westfield Corporation, created by the split of Westfield Group, in 2018. Retail properties owned by Unibail-Rodamco before the merger now carry the Westfield name.
As of 2018, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield is the largest commercial real estate company in Europe. Its portfolio consists of retail property, office buildings, and convention centers within Europe and North America. Many of its shopping centres use the Westfield brand launched by Westfield Group in 1960 and shared with Scentre Group for properties in Australia and New Zealand since 2014.
The Westfield Style Blog
letting go of an outdated marketing strategy & taking a leadership role in fashion
Stacy London, The face of Westfield Style.
CURRENT STATE: fast fashion
The Challenge
Leadership at Westfield recognized as part of a broader strategy, that it needed to translate key properties to luxury shopping destinations in their bid to remain competitive with Simon properties.
While they had established a great reputation for fashion in London and Australia, in the US they were not being taken very seriously.
Existing magazine features focused on mainstream fast fashion, and shopping transactions - vs. long-term brand building.
Anna Wintour: The authority on fashion.
FUTURE STATE: COUTURE
Next steps
We began with the assumption that there was an opportunity to elevate our approach to presenting fashion.
I tested this assumption with a typeform survey that was issued to a range of our existing customers in an effort to gather insights on their expectations and preferences.
Our aspirational goals were targeting retailers like Barney’s, Neiman Marcus, Mui Miu and Gucci.
Data revealed that the majority of shoppers felt that Westfield Style had fallen far behind the digital times. There was an expectation for more experiential marketing, including runway events, trunk shows, and expert advise.
The portfolio of Westfield properties defined
SHIFTING FROM OUTdated SHOPPER PROFILEs - TO BIGGER PICTURE PROPERTY PERSONAS
We recognized it was time to abandon outdated shopper profiles (shown below) and provide a clear vision for what visitors could expect at each of our properties (see grid). We ran brainstorming exercises and spent time speaking directly to the customer to redefine the culture of each property and in turn our approach to presenting fashion that would resonate with each local audience.
The new strategy for the fashion platform defined by property
We focused on four core pillars:
The framework
I began by looking at the overarching portfolio of properties and based on data gathered in surveys as well as in-person interviews and workshops, I developed a point of view (shown above) to serve as a broader framework for positioning, creative direction, content strategy, messaging, etc.
I felt that having this “north star” overview would facilitate discussions and help get all stakeholders in alignment. Once we reached consensus here, we could prioritize by property, and zero in on where to focus our efforts.
We took a phased approach to transition from having a magazine to eliminating it altogether.
Step 1) Signal a change by repositioning the creative direction of the magazine to focus on high fashion.
Step 2) Identify and engage online influencers in preparation for launching an online Blog.
WESTFIELD STYLE SHOPPING MANUAL: BEFORE
Raising the bar:
The creative direction of the magazine was clearly catering to a much lower standard than we were now aspiring to. A spokesperson with waning popularity, overloaded spreads, gaudy type treatments and cluttered assortments did nothing to position Westfield as an authority on high fashion.
WESTFIELD STYLE MANUAL: After
We took several immediate steps:
We eliminated the term “shopping” in the title, established a new partnership with Giuliana Rancic (who also became the MC for our fashion events in center throughout the year) and shifted the creative direction of the magazine enough to catch the attention of WWD. The aesthetic of the layouts were pushed in a much more fashion forward direction with a focused editorial opinion. A new partnership with WGSN, the leading authority on trend prediction, informed the stories we chose to tell.
We did a deep dive on high fashion publications and the aesthetic qualities that set them apart, especially photo art direction.
THE TASTEMAKERS
We were now well positioned to complete the transition.
We locked in a list of influencer partnerships, announced the upcoming launch of the new Blog, and began wire-framing for the new site.
The Results: Transition completed
With the launch of the new Westfield Style Blog, Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) announced that Westfield had “finally arrived” high praise coming from the go-to authority on fashion. As a result we were able to leverage a partnership with Anna Wintour as well. This coincided with the unveiling of the retail space at Ground Zero in NYC, under the Occulus designed by Santiago Calatrava Valls.
In the first few months of the soft launch Westfield Style received more than 202,000 unique visits and continued to grow at a rapid rate. The content on #WestfieldStyle was promoted to more than 320,000 opt-in email subscribers, in addition to over 1.6 million Facebook fans, and was shared via Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Readers could also sign up for email updates to have the latest content sent directly to their inbox.
