Brand Urbanism

Brand Urbanism is a blog at the intersection of urbanism and brand strategies.

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"Did you take a photo by the hashtag? No?! Then, my friend, you were never really there" (at Yas Marina Abu Dhabi)

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The Corporate Sponge

“There are two ways of reading the developments I have outlined. Certainly, one of these is of capitalism as a leviathan not only making its way in the world largely unimpeded, but using all manner of consumers’ own passions to stoke the engines a bit more.” Nigel Thrift

“Love it or hate it, one must give the devil its due: Global capitalism has proved far more resilient than either its harshest critics or most fer­vent champions ever expected. You have to ad­mire its per­verse abil­ity to in­cor­por­ate everything that pur­ports to op­pose it in­to it­self while also adding a price-tag.” Ross Wolfe

https://thecharnelhouse.org/2017/04/06/kendall-jenner-pepsi-ad/

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FordHub NYC experience

Source: Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

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First up on the Brand Urbanism reading list. Discovering the origins of Live-Work-Play from what was to be its exemplar, EPCOT.

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By mmike from 2015′s Like Me: Our bond with brands at London Design Museum

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(Source: www.sustainablebrands.com)

Ford and Transport for London partner to help improve London's air quality.

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“Our Proposition Is To Be The Creative Capital” Head of Brand Engagement, Ben Reed, discusses the future of Silvertown Quays

Silvertown Quays, a key site in East London's Royal Docks, for years seemed to be resistant to any efforts aimed at its redevelopment. In 2012, the year when everything was supposed to go right in London, Silvertown hosted the competition winning, but ultimately doomed 'meanwhile' scheme London Pleasure Gardens. The project was due to signal the regeneration of the Royal Docks, however it met a premature end when financial and operational issues resulted in the site operator entering into administration.

Prior to this plans for Biota! a ‘world class’ aquarium, research and conservation centre operated by ZSL were scrapped; a victim of the property related financial woes of 2008. How then has a site that increasingly felt like the graveyard of the grand dream, become the home of a proposed landmark project in London's relentless shift east?

Ben Reed, Head of Brand Engagement at The Silvertown Partnership, believes that as a result of businesses seeking relief from an expensive Central London commercial property bubble and a desire among brands to create innovative spaces, Silvertown will be able to capitalise on the needs of a growing number of businesses. 

“To us every business is a brand”

According to Ben, Silvertown is being setup to not only meet the requirements of brands but to also create the conditions necessary for burgeoning brands and more established one's to collaborate on a spatial platform based on open innovation. Ben suggested that as well as facilitating the kinds of innovative spaces that brands are seeking to create (spaces that Central London would struggle to accommodate), The Silvertown Partnership have 'spent a lot of time thinking about how brands are clustered'. Diverging from related innovation district models Ben explained, 'What we’re avoiding is the model of securing an anchor tenant then having everyone else fit around them, that’d go against what we believe in. The key is working with brands that share our values of collaboration and community building; so thinking about how would brand X work with brand Y while also helping to make Silvertown a destination.'

Silvertown Quays has been burdened with the responsibility of becoming a ‘destination’ throughout its recent history; evidenced by the attempts of Biota! and London Pleasure Gardens. It has also been a primary concern for The Silvertown Partnership as well as the local council. The wider vision for the Royal docks, put forward by former Mayor of London Boris Johnson and the Mayor of Newham Robin Wales, is to create a 'world-class' business and leisure destination and within this it is no surprise that the 'world's first purpose built brand destination' hit all of the right notes with borough and city officials. Ben described how the project has come together through 'an alchemy of brands telling us what they wanted, us working with Newham to find out actually what would make the area amazing and then what would bring people back to an area.'

Full Interview:

Can you explain your idea of brand space?

There is a lot of confusion about what we mean when we refer to brands. To us every business is a brand. In the world of property you have tended to find office space that is solely for employees; maybe with a coffee shop or breakout area thrown in. Now there has been a shift in gravity away from this kind of space to something that’s more experience led. Initially this was about increasing food and beverage options for employees and introducing conferencing facilities for guests but we’re starting to see commercial space created on the principles of ‘worktivity’ and wellbeing. Added to this you have spaces for public events and public and brand interaction. Gradually we’ve moved to place where some office spaces are created as much for employees and their wellbeing as they are for the public. The Siemens Crystal in North Greenwich is a great example of this. So what we’ve tried to do at Silvertown is gear up for this trend.  

Have you had difficulties explaining this concept as something different from a retail or business park? Everybody understands the dynamics of a shopping centre, very few people, especially in the UK, understand the concept of a brand experience. Brands at Silvertown will be thinking about how they measure their return on investment. It won’t be about sales or footfall; it will be about brand engagements and how many people they’ve communicated their brand values to. The psychology behind this means that a consumer won’t buy spontaneously but they will have a higher propensity to interact with the brand and be more receptive to marketing. So brand space is part of the wider marketing mix. We've always said in marketing that brands want to get closer to their consumers and you normally do that through a marketing agency, or through your marketing plan or media plan and doing a lot of audience profiling, but why not do something as simple as opening your doors up to them. A big driver for this is millennials. They can be an elusive audience and some brands are panicking, as traditional push media isn’t working. Nielsen reported that 81% of millennials prefer experiences to any other form of marketing. How have you gone about speaking to brands about coming to Silvertown? Well there are a few approaches. Partly it’s from property conversations where perhaps there are leases expiring and businesses are looking to position themselves within easy reach of talent pools. Cost is also a huge factor. Zone1 and 2 is becoming increasingly expensive for some businesses so Silvertown is attractive in that sense. But also you have brands actively contacting us and wanting to do some very creative things with space, and so we want to provide that flexibility. What we’re avoiding is the model of securing an anchor tenant then having everyone else fit around them, that’d go against what we believe in. The key is working with brands that share our values of collaboration and community building; so thinking about how would brand x work with brand y while also helping to make Silvertown a destination.  A lot of our time and effort has been spent on thinking about how we cluster brands and get the right mix working together. We haven’t gone down the whole tech city, sector specific route as sector boundaries are blurring. Automotive brands see themselves as lifestyle brands; some fashion retail brands are as much about tech as they are about design. Brands want to share a space with like-minded professionals across sectors to collaborate and learn from each other. From an urban planning and place-making perspective Silvertown clearly presents significant opportunities for job creation and the provision of homes. How did the Partnership approach this and how does brand space fit into this?

Yes, you could have it all residential; we didn’t want to do that. You could have had a business park, we didn’t want to do that, we didn’t think it’d give back to the area, so a large part was how we generate a significant number of jobs whilst delivering amazing buildings and homes. And so all of those things came together and there was an alchemy of brands telling us what they wanted, us working with Newham to find out actually what would make the area amazing and then what would bring people back to an area. I'm not on our planning team but as far as I know we were very open that we wanted to provide affordable housing, matching or above the threshold that Newham recommended and we were also very excited about the job creation that came with the brand and office typologies. So those were the key areas which building a community and job creation, and in a piece of serendipity all of these things came. We've got to point where we're really comfortable with how the brand experience buildings connect, how they marry with the office buildings and how they relate with the residential element.

Has it been difficult to marry the architectural ambitions of brands with the rest of the new developments and existing surroundings? We’re working with six leading architects including AHMM and Stanton Williams. Some brands want to work with their own architects and we are flexible to that but we don’t want Silvertown to be a mix match of architecture. So a vast majority of the site will be consistent with the DNA of Millennium Mills, creating almost like a chassis of fascia's and massing so that the buildings have a level of consistency, but while also allowing some architects to show creative flair in some of the other buildings.

This idea of a DNA applies as much to the building as it does to the area as a whole. How do you ensure this consistency of character extends beyond just the physical buildings? From a marketing perspective our proposition is to be the creative capital, but we realise that the reputation of Silvertown will be influenced by everything we do so every event we run, every piece of public realm that will be created. Our ambition is that the Silvertown community, including our brand and marketing team, review everything on site to make sure that the tone and the essence of Silvertown is not killed off by some sort of bad decision.

When you mention Silvertown a lot of people think back to the London Pleasure Gardens which ran into serious trouble. So we're very conscious that everything that happens has to be on brand. Silvertown, like Kings Cross and like other places is a brand; it’s a brand in its own right. It’s not a brand that’s been invented by a marketing agency, it’s already there. So we're conscious that we don't want to be swamped by another brand taking over Silvertown, and that’s going to be interesting because some of the brands we're talking to are huge, so how this develops will be interesting.

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Brands & Cities in Partnership. Amsterdam Based Pop-Up City Get to Grips with Brand Urbanism

'Brands and cities are working together, and more often, to find answers to the toughest and most costly urban challenges’ according to Wigger Verschoor of Amsterdam based creative agency Urban Jungle. Vershoor opened Brand Fund City, an event that took place earlier this month in Amsterdam that was co-organised by the urban trends blog Pop-Up City and cultural events organisation Pakhuis De Zwijgerheld, Brand Fund City arrived at the culmination of research undertaken by Pop Up City into city and corporate brand partnerships.

On the night Joop De Boer of Pop-Up City defined brand urbanism as ‘a cooperation between a city and a brand in which an urban project is being realised that is (partly) initiated or supported by a brand in return for exposure.' What followed was a number of examples of Pop Up City’s definition of brand urbanism. John Brady, Director of Communications at Portland Bureau of Transportation, talked via Skype about the partnership that the City of Portland formed with Nike to deliver a citywide bike sharing scheme, and the measurable benefits that arose for the city authority. While the project was already on its way to being rolled out across Portland, partnering with Nike as a sponsor permitted the city to ‘increase the number of bikes from 600 to 1000’, while also allowing ‘an expansion of the scheme service area’. Most importantly for the city, Nike's involvement generated the necessary coverage and excitement that enabled Portland to ‘reach policy goals of promoting cycling in an effective manner’. Brady stated that the partnership meant that the city authority could reach ‘an audience just outside of those who cycle regularly’.

“You make brand message more relevant by utilising cities” Hank Van Dijk

Brady also highlighted the opportunities that the partnership presented to Nike. Biketown, as the cycle share scheme is known, gives Nike a presence in the city at a scale that comparable brands would struggle to match, with influence over bike branding and the design of 100 Biketown Stations across Portland. The partnership also provided the Oregon based company with an opportunity to enhance their image as a civically conscious, locally embedded international brand. 

The mutual benefits promoted by this kind of partnership were echoed by former OMD Managing Director and founder of marketing agency Reynolds, Hank Van Dijk who shared his support for brand urbanism by posing the question 'why shouldn't a brand play a role in a city while at the same time enhancing its own brand image and message?'. With a growing need amongst brands to communicate messages beyond traditional push marketing methods Van Dijk identified cities as the focus for brands hoping to create and deliver more relevant messages to key target groups. The obstacle to increased utilisation of urbanism by brands is the gap in data that’ll allow projects to be benchmarked, establishing ROI or other sufficient metrics. With current cost focussed perspectives it'll perhaps be difficult to imagine spend by corporate brands on city projects gaining ground on other media spend.

“If done correctly it's a win win. If not it can be seen as brands taking up a position in a public space.” Wigger Verschoor

Speakers on the night were keen to point out that brand urbanism presents more than a transfer of top down approaches from government to corporations. ‘Citizens need to know what the deal means for them’ was how De Boer put forward the view that citizens are active participants in these schemes. If it has benefits for citizens (as was demonstrated by the presented cases of the Dubai Metro System which has been improved on the back of a rolling sponsorship program that allows brands to rename stations or the Belgian brewery De Konnick who funded night bus services in Ghent and Antwerp after government cuts in funding) then a project could be judged a success; without these benefits the partnership could run into opposition from citizens.

Public benefit is what provides a measure of what truly counts as a project rooted in brand urbanism according to De Boer. He pointed out that cases of temporary pop ups taking over a space in the city to hand out free products don't fit into Pop Up City's definition of brand urbanism as there is no lasting public benefit. Pop Up City believe that where there is lasting benefit then perhaps cities can't be seen to be selling out. As De Boer pointed out, the question of selling out 'depends on good taste and an honest project with real value to the city.'

Public benefit is however difficult to measure. Recent projects in London highlight that public benefit is a contested territory divided along the lines of the benefits perceived by city authorities and those experienced by citizens. Take for instance the Emirates Cable Car that was initially envisaged as an integrated piece of London’s transport infrastructure, yet is carrying far less than the 5500 daily passengers originally forecast; with only a fraction being commuters. The original scepticism that the cable car would be more of a tourist attraction than it ever would be a useful piece of commuter infrastructure has been proven right, however TFL point to the fact that the scheme will break even within 10 years as evidence that public money has been well invested. TFL are also satisfied with the added value generated by Emirates, who according to a recent London Assembly report are contributing more than financial benefits. Emirates presence in the area, in the form of the cable car and Emirates Aviation brand experience space, are key elements in former Mayor of London and the London Borough of Newham's vision to accelerate the Royal Docks regeneration from a fragmented post-industrial landscape to 'a world class business and leisure destination'.

Projects such as London’s cable car rely on a belief that there are a never ending supply of brands with the capital and desire to form long term partnerships with city governments. Based on current trends and the cases presented during Brand Fund City this is an understandable conclusion to reach, however as brand and city government partnerships increase so in turn will public  scrutiny of the brands and authorities in question.

Brand Fund City is available to view here

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How Roald Dahl influenced brands and urbanism

Fiction is often looked to for inspiration. The relevance of a story in a period other than that in which it was published is generally taken as evidence of the writer’s foresight. Take for instance Roald Dahl and the fact that this year, one hundred since the year of his birth, a series of global events have been planned to mark the author's creative vision and influence. Among, the characters and stories that still impact today, the chocolate factory from his 1964 novel can be seen as a precedent which has provided a ready made framework for corporate brands intending to win greater relevance and influence in our city spaces and lives today.

In many ways, Wonka's chocolate factory is the proto-brand experience space. A workspace-cum-immersive experience that draws visitors in to a brand narrative not only encapsulated in the building itself but in the geographic locations surrounding and connected to it. While visitors are unlikely to be subject to the self-inflicted cruelties experienced by Wonka’s less favoured guests, there is an implicit expectancy to give oneself over to interactive, playful, educational and at times absurd spaces and activities.

The range and popularity of brand experience space (brand space) has reached a point where it is now viable for it to become an anchoring element of urban developments. Silvertown Quays, a mixed-use development emerging in London’s Royal Docks, has been promoted as ‘the world’s first purpose built brand destination’.

Here a number of brand spaces will exist alongside new homes and dedicated workspace in a balance that developers, The Silvertown Partnership, hope will facilitate collaboration between burgeoning businesses, established corporate brands and curious visitors.

Brand space can be identified as part of a wider trend of corporate strategic efforts to engage, adopt and influence urban processes; an activity that has been referred to as brand urbanism. This term describes the process by which urbanism is mediatized and abstracted often in order to enhance the image of a place or a brand. For corporate brands, this often occurs through prosaic methods of aligning their brands with particular spaces through, for example, sponsorship and corporate philanthropy, but also through creative methods of engaging with publics and places.

Brand urbanism can also refer to a related yet distinct activity of brand initiated building and city making, and it is here that brand space is playing an important role. Businesses are creating built forms that hybridise or differ from other spatial corporate footprints (traditional retail stores, HQ's, factories) in that they are intended to act as physical manifestations of the abstract brand. For years businesses have and continue to use ephemeral spaces for this purpose. However a growing number of businesses are seeking to create a permanent brand presence in cities or open up existing, previously private, spaces to the public, in the same way as that fictional factory.

There are many reasons why this particular corporate manifestation is becoming a fixture in our cities, a number of which revolve around businesses and cities drawing from each other in order to enhance their brands chances of gaining an advantage over competition. Of course this isn't a new development, but businesses do seem to be taking a more strategic approach to urban space, and taking advantage of the fact that it can be less democratising and more amenable to control than online platforms. It is also equally driven by a business need to, as widely researched, engage a millennial cohort who while shopping online continue to seek physical places of consumption, interaction and experience. So, as well as investing in their online and social media presence, recent examples have shown a tendency for businesses to invest in and re-engage urban space in innovative ways, creating destinations and seamless brand experiences through an extraction of abstract brand value from places. I recently visited Louis Vuitton's Island Maison, a glass and steel pavilion designed to give the impression of floating just off the luxury quarter of Marina Bay, Singapore. Most of the staff I encountered in the space weren't on the retail floor but on either of the exhibition floors hoping to not sell me a product but tell me a story of the brands heritage, a story which has been reimagined and presented through a collection of newly designed heritage based foldable furniture and travel accessories (created in collaboration with several international designers) and an exhibition of original Louis Vuitton trunks which have been bought back from their original owners, at great expense I imagine.

These travel and personal journey themed collections seemed to gain greater significance by being displayed in the glass promontory like structure of the Island Maison. What can also be perceived here is a business using urban space to create a mutual transformation of the place and the brand. Marina Bay's association with luxury is enhanced by Louis Vuitton’s physical presence and the brands image is in turn enhanced through its connection with a high-end development, which contains the landmark Marina Bay Sands hotel. The value exchange is seamless, and lends credence to the experiences contained within the Louis Vuitton brand space. From Montblanc's concept store in Beijing to the House of Vans in Waterloo, you'll find examples of brands across all sectors strategically using urban space for corporate goals. It's easy to understand why these examples of brand space and other brand activity in urban space can be seen as 'Facebook urbanism'. All of these spaces and the experiences contained are ready made material that will be interacted with and shared, generating content for brands. Without prompt I was politely told by a Louis Vuitton employee 'yes, you can take photos'. There is however more to this trend. These spaces are as much about building relationships with consumers as they are about content generation. In some cases they are inherently influenced by open innovation in their ambition to create a platform for sharing, networking and developing ideas with consumers and businesses in a physical space.

It'd be too generous to completely credit Roald Dahl with the invention of brand space. The typologies other precedents include, for example, the pavilions of world fairs both past and present. And while brand space won't feature in any of the centenary events planned to celebrate the work of the great author, Roald Dahl 100 is as good a time as any to reflect on brand spaces most culturally rich and resonant representation.

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Live, Work and Play, the real legacy of EPCOT

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#brandspace #brandexperience (at Beefeater Distillery)

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Starbucks Roastery, planned for Chelsea Market, NY

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Not Punny: Wyoming’s New ‘That’s WY’ Tagline Tries Hard to Be Clever

Wyoming is having a brand identity crisis that is probably not going to be solved by a pun based on its US postal service initials

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Some things we do

#Urbanism #placebranding

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Capitalism is carpeting expectation and capturing potential. Simple condemnation of this tendency, as if from some putative outside, or, alternatively, embracing it as a part of some continuously fluid overarching vitalist order, will not do. Rather, it seems to me to call for radically new imaginings of exactly how things are, but under a new aspect that we can currently only glimpse...

Nigel Thrift, Non-representational Theory (2008)