Project Overview

From its inception in October 2012, East Village has kept to its overarching philosophy of delivering a one-of-a-kind retail and commercial urban marketplace. When it opened in October 2014, East Village delivered on this philosophy and launched a truly “one-of-a-kind” shopping centre located in a high profile location only 3kms from Sydney’s CBD, in the heart of a vibrant residential community in Victoria Park, Zetland.

Organisation

PAYCE Consolidated Limited

Team

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

Project Brief

Right from the very first moment you approach and walk through the doors at East Village you will experience the vibrant activity and atmosphere of a fully leased 32,540 square metre buzzing urban marketplace and commercial centre.

Under one roof, you will find local services, along with some of the best fresh food providers, specialty and lifestyle retailers including a state-of-the-art Virgin Active Health Club, a matchless Audi Service Centre, specialist office accommodation, a Montessori Academy, MyHealth Medical Centre and a Coles supermarket, East Village is a truly unique destination.

Project Innovation/Need

Our 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 "live car park" information provided by the East Village app - enabling consumers to see, remotely and in real time, how many car spaces are available. 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.

Design Challenge

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. on-site activations requiring social-sharing utilising #EastVillageVP to participate, in-centre social "treasure hunts", 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.

Effectiveness

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.