intu

Turnkey retail and diversification communications with intu

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Commercial challenge

intu appointed Gough to delivery turnkey marketing for a range of its popular shopping centres across the UK.

At a number of centres, we were tasked with stakeholder and community consultation in the  planning process, helping the client achieve consents for extensions, non-retail developments and more.

What’s more, intu quickly saw how well Gough can ease the impact of construction works on local communities and challenged us to adapt our approach to neighbours and visitors at open centres subject to refurbishments and extension works.

A key part of the requirement was to reflect intu’s playful and inspirational brand values both in our creative work and our physical interactions.

Human approach

Upon our initial appointment, Gough visited intu’s Head Office for a brand immersion day, ensuring we soaked up the company’s values, tone of voice and processes to deliver all our services in a fully aligned manner.

We then created bespoke communications that both served this purpose and helped the client achieve its growth and diversification objectives over the longer term.

We managed in-centre consultation events ourselves and prepped other consultants who joined us, thereby freeing up the centre teams to get on with their day-to-day jobs in such busy public environments.

It was vital that we recognised and reflected the fun and playful values of the company in real time, reflecting the focus on ensuring visitors and centre neighbours remained proud of where the ‘live, work and play’ and got maximum benefits out of what was for most, leisure time.

From weekend engagement exercises, to creating positive meetings with stakeholders, Gough adopted a ‘we are intu’ approach and became ambassadors for the brand.

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Results

During our time with intu, we were able to help the client secure planning consents at Watford and Trafford Centre, Manchester, whilst also supporting at Merry Hill, Lakeside in Essex and Broadmarsh in Nottingham.

Our services in Watford won an industry award for outstanding engagement relating to a Public Right of Way running through the middle of the shopping centre. intu secured an extremely difficult planning consent, which had failed prior to Gough’s appointment.