Not Just Another Starbucks: Part 2 of Place-Making: "Like SEO for Real Spaces"
Either it is a real estate development or an online marketplace: you need content to drive people to your site an unique value proposition which makes them stay.
Your online marketplace needs “eyeballs”. The real estate / brick & mortar businesses need “foot traffic” to get started.
Coworking spaces are just one format of content which both attracts, engages and invites people to stay: which is what makes it sexy.
Previously, real estate developers were used to the basic retail content plan: besides all PR, Marketing, etc, they would strategically place "trust brands" to attract people there. For the purposes of this article, Let’s call it the “Starbucks” strategy.
It sure pays more than rent: with brand, trust, traffic and, bonus: a landmark (like when you tell your friend, driver or blind date: "I'm at the Starbucks on 1st floor").
The "Starbucks" concept works specially well when high foot traffic is already engineered into the space: such as train stations, airports, downtown malls - places where people go because they have to, not as a choice.
The Starbucks strategy is "borrowing trust" by curating branded tenants which act as a good reasons for people to hang out there.
It has been working, somehow. Except that: what if there’s a Starbucks everywhere?
Certainly, if talking about spaces which inherit high traffic from their surroundings, that's none of their business (because traffic is an added value). But when talking about new developments and building lifestyle ecosystems from scratch, you must add value in order to get traffic. Specially if talking about new or challenging locations: the typical "destination" kind of space.
Customer behavior has changed. The reason why people decide to stay, work and live at certain place has changed and it’s more like what happens in the online world now.
From retail to office and residential spaces, people are free to move around and choose a space that gives them a life experience, beyond the basic services provided.
People want more than food, even though food remains as one of the best lead magnets in real estate (specially in Malaysia, I'd say).
You may say that people want “entertainment, fun, art” and what all of it really means is that real estate overly used word: “lifestyle”, which has become a buzz word, even though it very well defines what people look for before deciding "where to stay".
Why Community (Belonging) is the New Black
Lifestyle literally means a “way of living”. Literally, people want to feel and be perceived in a certain way.
To a young business man, it may sound glamorous to share a picture his desk overseeing the city, taken from his office the top of high rise building. While to a young creative hipster, she might feel happier sharing a perfectly angled picture of her brunch at the trendiest cafe in town, where she works from.
Communities are driven by shared identity and interests, which define your choices of lifestyle and consumption habits. It ain't about ethnic or social divides, even though the demographics obviously affect what people like, say and do.
Lifestyle is, essentially belonging.
Belonging is about identity, which is about branding - which can be perfectly designed by the kind of “content” you put in to attract the right people.
That’s where place-making comes about: as the art of designing, creating and curating relevant content to turn spaces into places.
Place making is about adding identity into spaces and attracting a branded community into it, as a way to build a sustainable and loyal base of customers who will define themselves as part of your place - and will act as your main marketing building up a sustainable, community-driven, self-populating space.
Cutting the long story short: putting in a Starbucks in there is no longer a reason why people would stay at your place.
People want spaces they can relate to, where they can belong to and feel ownership about, at the same time.
Summing Up: Content is The Engine of Adding Value to Physical Spaces
Community building is basically “creating excuses to bring people together”. A specific space is implicit to this concept.
Content is the value you add in order to attract, engage and retain people to a space.
There are different types of content for each stage of a development - and what a place maker does is to identify the communities you are targeting, understand their needs and wants and build relevant content which will attract those people over time.
Up next, we will bring up successful cases of place making which got translated into different formats: creative retail, art spaces, making and coworking spaces, you name it.
Note: The purpose of this series is to find solutions for space optimization and valuation through a scalable and replicable system of building communities which can populate and add meaning to an ever-growing number of new developments.
The same knowledge can be applied to small businesses which are brick & mortar (coffee shops and retail in general).
Up Next:
- Great Examples of Place-Making in KL and beyond
- Interview with Nani Kahar (Publika) and others
- The Science of SEO to Real Spaces: Attract, Engage, Stay
- Engineering Serendipity: The Art of Making people feel Lucky at your Space
- Doing it yourself: Content Design, Creation and Curation
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