With Ozfest, Australia comes to West 12 shopping centre in Shepherds Bush - boosting footfall, increasing dwell times and enabling retailers to attract new customers.

Grappa developed the five-day festival to target both the large Aussie and Kiwi catchment and 18-35s who love movies, dining and great deals. In its first year - January 2007 - footfall increased by 4.4%, while occupancy levels at Vue Cinemas (which anchors West 12) were two-thirds higher than weekly average. Aussie-flavoured tenants had their best ever weeks.

We held Ozfest over the same period in 2008, anchored by the same key partners, but we added consumer value by securing additional tenant involvement from the likes of Morrisons. Results surpassed 2007. Vue enjoyed a 69% increase in occupancy; Aussie bar Belushi’s had a 20% sales increase; and West 12’s overall footfall increased by 9.3%.

Grappa developed all the creative to promote Ozfest, as well as handled all PR across London and media buying. 

The story in detail…

West 12 Shopping and Leisure is located in one of the most vibrant areas of west London, right in the heart of Shepherds Bush, on the Green itself.

Ten years ago Shepherds Bush was a deprived area. Changes in social demographics, particularly to the south of West 12 in Olympia, resulted in an influx of professional people, many of whom have remained in the area – now with young families. A second influx has occurred in the last decade, attracting young professionals and in particular, thousands of antipodeans who have made Shepherds Bush their own quarter in this part of west London. This is reflected in the variety of bars and clubs on Shepherds Bush Green itself, as well as at West 12 which has two Aussie focused retailers – Belushi’s and Jumbucks.

The challenge that continually faces West 12 is how to overcome negative perceptions among ABC1s who live and work in the area that West 12 shopping centre does not offer a strong enough line up to attract them.

Aligned to this is the desire to ensure that C2DE shoppers, many of whom live in the northern wards of Shepherds Bush, and for whom West 12 is their nearest shopping centre, continue to shop at West 12 while its owners start to re-engineer the tenant line up towards the ABC1 shoppers. Research confirms that there is a significant opportunity for West 12 to penetrate the primary catchment further, with some 61% of ABC1s within a 20 minute travel time.

The overall marketing strategy addresses this in a number of ways – through PR activity in local press and in glossy magazines; above the line press advertising and door drops; and strong community relations work in the immediate area. Events play a central role in the strategy, encouraging ABC1s in particular, to visit the centre and thereby enable them to experience first hand the friendly, vibrant atmosphere and good mix of convenience-led retail, plus the wide variety of bars and restaurants.

In 2006, West 12 embarked on a strategy to partner with its biggest leisure tenant VUE Cinemas in developing events that would increase the number of shoppers visiting the centre. Events that address niche audiences were found to draw the strongest, positive response. For example, the pre-launch of the film Casino Royale with a Bond-themed event in the malls, which strongly engaged retailers, shoppers and the media; and the ‘alternative World Cup’ which attracted hundreds of children to play Xbox 360 football on a large VUE cinema screen in the week prior to the real tournament in Germany. Ozfest was the third major niche event in the budget year 2006/2007, taking place in January 2007 to celebrate Australia Day.

Objectives and Strategy

The objectives were to target young adult Australians living and work in the borough and west London, and young professional ABC1s for whom enjoying a night out around the cinema is a popular leisure activity.

We created the concept of Ozfest as a five day celebration of Australia (taking place between 22 – 26 January) and anchored by Australia Day itself on 26th January. West 12 achieved the buy in of VUE, Jumbucks and Belushi’s to run the event, and gained the support of all its tenants, which could see the evidence of the ‘halo’ effect in delivering increased footfall to the centre through previous events.

To make the event a success, West 12 needed Ozfest to:

• Promote itself as cost effectively as possible
• To increase footfall in the centre overall during Ozfest week
• To increase footfall among the three tenant participants: VUE, Jumbucks and Belushi’s
• To achieve good local PR
• To build upon the previous niche events – World Cup FIFA football and Casino Royale – to generate goodwill and further buy-in from VUE for the future

Implementations

To maximise the budget and attract the Aussie audience, we brokered a contra deal with TNT magazine. This is a weekly magazine aimed at people from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa working and living in the UK, with a bias towards events and listings in London. It has 67,000 circulation (ABC).

In return for TNT being made ‘official media partners’ for Ozfest, which would result in their logo appearing on all consumer marketing materials, and for TNT readers to win a variety of prizes – ranging from a ‘free movie for a year’ pass to Festival-only passes - West 12 received substantial support. The package include two advertorial features in TNT Presents and TNT Magazine; two TNT Extra Features (its weekly online newsletter); two half page adverts in TNT Magazine; a full page feature on the TNT website for three weeks (which has 268,000 unique users each month); and a full page ‘Up for Grabs’ competition in its 22 January edition, which also provided opt-in email addresses for future marketing activity.

Alongside TNT, VUE advertised Ozfest on its ‘What’s On’ leaflet and on its main digital display panel on Shepherds Bush Green, which has thousands of cars / people passing it daily. VUE also launched its own dedicated web pages to promote Ozfest, enabling tickets to be booked online. This was linked to the TNT website. VUE also included (and designed) a ‘tear off’ free beer voucher from Belushi’s to go into every cinema pass sold. Eight cinema tickets were also provided to West 12 for local press.

The marketing strategy featured local PR in the run-up to the Festival. This even attracted the interest of the new Westfield London shopping centre (under development in White City) who requested leaflets for its Aussie construction workers.

Results

Footfall for the week commencing 22nd Jan was 111,623, up from 106,879 in the previous week (w/c 15th Jan), a rise of 4.4%. It dropped back down 3% the following week. An analysis of the Daily Distribution graphs and figures for the weeks before and after Ozfest week shows that footfall was higher for the Monday –Thursday period of Ozfest week than in the preceding four weeks or following two weeks.

The footfall figures also need to be understood in the context of the bus stop closures on Shepherds Bush Green, which were affecting the centre’s footfall. It is possible that West 12 would have seen an even more significant change in footfall had the centre’s transport links been running as usual.

For the specific retailers involved in the promotion, the results were compelling.

Jumbucks’ management confirmed that they had had their best Thursday night, taking over a £1,000.  Comments Jamie Bishop at Jumbucks: “”Ozfest was just a fantastic promotion. Sales were huge, and on every night of the festival we had really good takings, with loads of people coming down to redeem the Ozfest flyers.”

Paul Black at Belushi’s said “It was excellent. Sales were strong and we were up on last year’s figures.”

VUE benchmarked Ozfest against film festivals it had run in the past. For Ozfest total occupancy in the auditoriums was 54.4%. Average occupancy levels range between 15% - 20%, making Ozfest VUE’s single most successful Film Festival event in Shepherds Bush.

Commented Paul Greer, General Manager at VUE, “Not only was this a great event with outstanding results for VUE, the whole event ran seamlessly and smoothly thanks to West 12’s team.”

Local press interest not only extended to eight journalists attending and covering the festival, but also led The Hammersmith & Shepherds Bush Gazette to invite Centre Manager Jason King to be profiled in its business pages, and for Paul Greer of VUE to become its Film Critic writing a regular cinema feature for the paper each month. Hammersmith & Shepherds Bush Gazette is the dominant paper in the catchment; a paid-for weekly title with a circulation of 91,287 (ABC). Press attended from: viewlonon.co.uk, Hammersmith & Shepherds Bush Gazette, In London Magazine, London Voice Series and TNT Magazine.

Because of the high volume of tickets sold, VUE waived a £500 fee for screening the films. As a further indicator of the popularity of Ozfest, The Castle (screened on Thursday 25^th January) attracted so many pre-bookings that VUE had to swap the screening to its largest auditorium.

The competition with TNT attracted 597 entries during its one week online, providing all partners with the opportunity to market to these entrants with promotional information for forthcoming events.

In summary, Ozfest ‘week’ resulted in a 4.4% increase in footfall; occupancy levels at VUE surged from averages of 15/20% to 54%; Jumbucks had its best Thursday night ever. The campaign met all objectives, not least cost effectiveness. Thanks to contra deals Ozfest was delivered for under budget.