Project Overview

Since launching in October 2014, the vision surrounding East Village was always to be "one of a kind". When it was time to celebrate Mardi Gras, then the event needed to be not only one of a kind, but truly unique!

Organisation

PAYCE Consolidated Limited

Team

PAYCE Consolidated Limited, Owner and Developer
And-Sydney, Retail Creative and Brand
SBPR, Retail Public Relations
Metropolis, Retail Media Buying
Ionic Management,Project Manager
Wallaringa Consulting, Project Manager - Retail

Project Brief

East Village wanted to celebrate Mardi Gras in a unique manner.

The creative team came up with several concepts to engage with the community to celebrate this event by encouraging visitors to the East Village Shopping Centre.

The event need to attract and engage with everyone in the community. So a concept was developed and carried throughout the centre, social media and outdoor signage.

Project Innovation/Need

The East Village audience is both "always on" (digitally) while also advocates of the "live small" and craft philosophies - this created great opportunities for online/offline strategies, using digital properties and social media to augment our consumers lives, not merely dominate their screens with sales messaging. An extremely innovative example of this was "Mardi Gras Recover Kits" and "Best dressed dog" competition.

Never forgetting our retailers, we also developed the innovative "time-bomb” or time-sensitive deals that empower retailers by allowing them to determine time-lengths for digital deals, and in turn create centre/retailer traffic in lulls.

User Experience

Social media played an integral role in the marketing and has proved an excellent opportunity to demonstrate innovative approaches to emerging technologies and trends (e.g. personalised giveaways, rewarding social advocates and grass-roots marketing (e.g. cutest pet contests, community activations).

Striking this balance between online/offline behaviours has created a vocal, positive and engaged community, with the Facebook page currently performing in the top 10% of pages internationally against metrics of growth and engagement.

Sustainability

Facebook is our primary online community hub, and provides a good indication of who our customer is and what content they best respond to. Out of the 3,135 page Likes since September 2014, we can confirm that 63% of our followers are women and on average, our followers are online between 7pm-11pm. Based on their engagement patterns, our online community is less driven by sales messaging and more inclined to take part in personalised promotions, and on-site and community activations.

Consumer feedback is regularly shared through our Facebook and website pages, and less often in person, which is consistent with the behaviours and characteristics of the trade area. This feedback is shared internally with the East Village team, and communicated with retailers where appropriate, with feedback utilised constructively to measure performance of retailers and the centre as a whole.

Centre sales and traffic numbers are measured against comparable centres on an annual and per square metre basis. Where available, industry benchmarks are utilised to measure individual retailers’ performance. A cross analysis of sales and traffic is utilised during key times of the year and at the time of centre activations to measure the impact of the activity.