 Good afternoon everybody and welcome to today's webinar Express the importance of place-making in the future of retail with our guest speaker Donna Howard and which has been organized by the CIM Northwest Group. If you're a university student attending today's webinar then you may want to sign up to the CIM Marketing Club. It will keep you up to date with the latest trends, innovations and concepts in the marketing industry. All you need to do is hover your camera over the QR code you can see on the screen and that will take you through to the marketing club sign-up page. So I would now like to introduce our guest speaker for today's session place strategy director at Liverpool one Donna Howard. Over to you Donna. Thank you Judith and thanks to all of you for joining me today. I hope that this will be a very insightful 35 minutes or so where I'll be talking to you about the importance of place-making in the future of retail. We talk about future but actually it's the now place-making isn't a new concept since the pandemic. It's something that we were doing already although the pace of change in many ways thanks to COVID has never been so rapid. I've been at Liverpool one for almost 15 years and many things have changed. I guess it's effectively what keeps me here. The world is ever-changing and brands need to change at pace or they won't survive. I'll explain what we mean by place shaping and I'll explain the importance of brand. I'll then go on to look at a key future behaviour. Not a trend but perhaps a way of life and specifically I'm talking here about sustainability and the environment and how Liverpool one like every brand needs to consider its impact and how this influences the way we work and deliver in future. For the benefit of those who don't know Liverpool or perhaps Liverpool one now. Let me remind you of Liverpool city centre just over 15 years ago. The importance of this is to consider the importance of brand and brand perception in changing habits. Previously known as the Paradise Street Development Area, Grover was appointed to rebuild the centre of Liverpool a one billion pound project of the biggest regeneration project of its kind in Europe. The city had to renew its link with its waterfront and it had to regain its status as a number one regional shopping destination. Shopping has always been a UK favourite. It's definitely a national pastime but shops have had to be in the right place and of the right mix and of a sufficient quality to be economically stable. Prior to Liverpool one, 21 shops paid 90% of the total rents in the city centre. So the ambition for Grover appointed to develop Liverpool one was massive and it was an extension to what Liverpool already offered but it needed to be of a much higher quality, a broader appeal and better served by transport links, really integrating it into what was already there but raising the quality substantially. And with the construction over several years, the Paradise project became known to the general public and all those involved as Liverpool one. So the face of the city has changed. The development of Liverpool one has successfully reconnected the heart of the city with its famous waterfront. Now it's easy to walk to and from the Royal Albert Dock in a matter of minutes and connected the heart of the city. There's a connection that's not just enjoyed by the many residents and the locals in the area but by the growing tourist population that Liverpool now enjoys. Liverpool one comprises 42 acres of the heart of the city centre. We've got over 700 residents, two hotels and amongst the many shops, bars and restaurants, perhaps the dual in the crown is a five acre park which sits at the top of three of the largest of three new car parks that are now operated by Q Park. The attraction of the mixed use development at Liverpool one is shown in the visitors, visitor numbers that we enjoy and these peaked pre pandemic but just over 29 million visits per year. And Liverpool one has continued to evolve over the last decade or more. For example you can see here on the right hand side but in 2008 88% of units were retail, 12% were leisure whereas now around 20% of brands are leisure led including food and drink and arise in what we call competitive socialising such as indoor golf, table tennis and Escape Live which has recently joined. The lineup remains very strong and there are expected names on the high streets such as Apple, Adidas, Zara and John Lewis all performing well alongside new names such as Gordon Ramsay's Bread Street Kitchen and local coffee operator Bean Coffee and later this year gravity will open and is set to be one of the largest gravity spaces outside of London which will offer a mix of ego carting and lots of competitive socialising over two floors which takes the space of the former Debenham's unit but the evolution of gravity replacing traditional retail is significant in itself where visitors will be able to enjoy urban golf much more modern food and drink offering and a bar concept and it just demonstrates specifically for me how much the high street is changing and at such a speed. So with a vast change in the offer within the city centre and so much investment our challenge over the years and non-morse so to this present day is to ensure that we provide a visitor experience where people are willing to travel. We've gradually expanded our catchment from a very hyper local audience extending that catchment to attract audiences from far and wide. Visiting Liverpool Wall or any successful destination is no longer simply about shopping. When it's first established visitors to some degree may still have shot through necessity but in 2022 now visitors come through choice and have done now for several years. They've chosen Liverpool Wall as a location to spend their leisure time. Shopping for necessity can be done online. For convenience your shopping can be with you the next day or even the same day if you're willing to pay the price but we're human beings and we're social animals and we crave experiences and togetherness. Our focus on the experience extends beyond those experiences you can enjoy in store such as in the Apple shop it's very much a showroom more than a shop. We focus on the whole experience that visitors coming into Liverpool can enjoy across the 42 acres of the Liverpool Wall estate. We successfully expanded our catchment by a million regular million people who regularly visit Liverpool. The catchment now comprises 2.3 million people versus just 1.3 million when Liverpool Wall first opened to the public. Our latest research pre-COVID suggested that around 20% of visits came from tourism and that's a number that certainly wasn't realised over a decade ago. To achieve such growth we not only had to establish Liverpool Wall as a household name through a very effective media and PR strategy to achieve high levels of awareness but we had to work hard to challenge perceptions to appeal to a broad target audience winning their hearts and minds perhaps off a backdrop of decline for the city. I've shown here an overview of our four audiences for super groups that are defined using the Acorn segmentation tool. Acorn segments the UK population into five main categories within which there are 17 groups and 59 individual profiles of person based on their lifestyle, their household income and their habits. We've narrowed this as you can see here into four super groups which is far more manageable than 59 different individual categories but we aim to appeal to families to older generations and to students through a mix of retail and leisure and other experiences that motivate audiences in very different ways. In part this comprises our marketing strategy but the ultimate visitor experience is achieved through our place making strategy but before I go on to that I want to touch on the importance of brand. Many times throughout our growth we pondered upon what we call ourselves. Are we a shopping centre? No. Are we a city centre? Well we're part of one but the city centre is way beyond our own invisible boundary lines. In written terms any of you that have looked up and been online will refer to ourselves as a retail and leisure destination but that hardly trips off the tongue does it? So usually we just simply call ourselves Liverpool one. Now I could take the entire presentation on brand alone but I won't but I will touch on the process that we worked through to develop our brand and this still guides us today in everything that we deliver. So why is brand identity so important? For Liverpool one it's because we've developed in a city that was known for more recently before Liverpool one a history of decline and we needed to challenge perceptions and establish a new conversation. People are at the heart of Liverpool one. We aim to make our visitors smile because when it's all about people and people are at the centre of our thinking we know that we're getting things right and there are many processes and methods to develop a clear brand proposition and at Liverpool one we worked with a very experienced brand agency called Brand Vista also responsible for developing strategies of many household names and from a destination perspective for brands such as Merlin and Green King Pubs. There are different steps to follow in different approaches but in every sense it's important to understand who our competitors are and to have a clear understanding of our audiences. On knowing that we set about understanding our brand purpose and this exercise looked at what we're already saying to our audiences for example within many of our marketing communications but more importantly we undertook research to understand what people actually felt about us. I'm sharing with you here actually what is our brand purpose? You can see there on the right hand side our brand purpose is put simply to make our visitors smile. So we stepped about conducting a series of mini surveys and focus groups comprising Liverpool one team members, people who worked in the various shops and bars and restaurants at Liverpool one and of course our visitors. The research allowed us to explore answers to some of the queries that are listed here on this slide. The process took several weeks and we founded upon this brand purpose to make our visitors smile. If we can achieve this within the resources that are available to us we believe that we can deliver commercial success and long term growth. This has become a sort of sense check against everything that we do even through to how we operate internally within our own business and to the way that we manage our relationships with our occupiers and when I say occupiers I'm talking the shops, the bars, the restaurants and right the way through to even the manner by which we might deal with customer inquiries or any issues should they arise. And as part of the process we also established a new set of values we believe in each other. We all take responsibility and above all we have pride and we challenge ourselves on being brilliant. We feel that this ensures that we truly live the brand. So from brand to a closer look at placemaking a focus here allows us to develop a compelling brand narrative to truly deliver on our brand purpose. When we talk about placemaking though what do we actually mean? When we look at an identity this is our brand visually how we present it and how we talk about everything that we do especially through our marketing and communications but strategically placemaking seeks to attract investment in the form of brands choosing to trade at Liverpool one. But for the context of this presentation we focus on the sense of place from a visitor or a consumer perspective. We are committed to a high quality of public space. We're increasingly focused on the positive impact that we can have on the quality in life and the well-being of visitors, local residents, neighbouring communities and our city centre workforce. Through an in-house team of around 135 people we're responsible for keeping 42 acres of space clean safe and attractive. I've listed here some of the key aspects of placemaking and without reading them verbatim I want to go on to be able to share examples of some of the elements that are listed here and how we've invested time, passion and pride into game changing elements of our strategy. We have to ensure that we operate a clean and a safe estate 365 days of the year and 24 hours a day. Without this nothing else is worth it. The way I describe it is there's no point having icing on the cake if the cake is already crumbling through new technology on our estate such as our Wi-Fi platforms. We continually measure the collective efforts of our strategy by following a small number of KPIs. The overriding being to repeatedly ask our visitors the likelihood to recommend and their likelihood to revisit. Pleasingly we score 98% on both of these key KPIs and thanks to technology and through our app we can keep checking this as we operate 365 days of the year. Okay so the visitor experience more and more people we believe and I think research tells us and I'm sure everybody can relate to this they want to feel fill their lives with experiences not always things they want to have stories to tell not just stuff to show perhaps more so now post COVID well with COVID at least in the rearview mirror we're seeing that people are enjoying getting back out and coming together again. We believe alongside a great line up of brands but we need to deliver experiences that build loyalty so whilst our occupiers inside the retail units themselves they focus on similar quality experiences and they'll always invest in customer service and training of their own their own staff whilst that's happening we focus on the experiences around the public realm we call it enlivenment and our aim is to entertain people engage with people involve them and also educate I've mentioned before people are at the heart of Liverpool one if you remember our brand purpose we want to make our visitors smile the well-being of everyone is spent place in our thinking for everything that we do and we support people and communities and are committed to working with local arts and cultural organizations and to collaborate on city-wide initiatives our approach is simple to enlivening our places in our spaces know your audience I previously showed you very briefly our broad audiences you know more mature audiences families millennials students variety is key to appeal to everybody but alienating them every enlivenment proposal that we consider is considered alongside our values we take responsibility to delivering to the highest of standards or we won't do it at all we have a number of overarching themes in our approach to enlivening Liverpool one and music sport art and culture are key i'm going to take a couple of moments to share with you some of the highlights for those of you that know Liverpool you will absolutely be familiar with tickle the ivories we have over a hundred performers already lined up to perform this summer for 10 weeks of free music when the pianos go back out into our public realm from tomorrow this is a key partnership with open culture and it is a piano busking festival that realizes some real talent at grassroots level together with attracting in some famous names and faces the reason we partner with open culture and the collaboration here is key is because we share the same brand values open culture want you and everybody to know that you could be more arty than you believe they want you to get involved in more arty stuff around Merseyside mainly because it's proven to make your life a little bit better open culture is an independent social enterprise working collaboratively across the region to increase the profile engagement in arts they put on other attractions such as light night in Liverpool and various winter and summer arts markets but the organization's developed projects such as tickle the ivories with Liverpool one because put simply they feel it just makes people feel happier so as part of our festival we'll also provide free piano lessons and we've discovered some real talent from young children they've never had the chance to play a piano before they stumbled upon it in Liverpool one they like the feel of it and then they've managed to enjoy some free music lessons and then continue that through various funding streams within their own schooling we have to be careful with our programming because as you saw in an earlier slide Liverpool one isn't just a home to a large number of visitors it's also home to 750 residents also so we have to program the pianos carefully at various times of the day and in various locations around the estate but this is an initiative that has just gone from strength to strength and a key part of our place making and a reason why people choose to come to Liverpool one versus perhaps a retail park or something perhaps even more conveniently just down the road I mentioned that sport is another key theme for several years we've celebrated most of the nation's sporting endeavors from football world cups to the olympics and the commonwealth games we even hosted the netball world cup fan park back in 2008 which provided a huge draw particularly for women and girls and a key audience for us when it comes to shopping much of our community engagement is rooted in grassroots sports and some of sports days have been held on Chevasse park partnering with the likes of Liverpool John Morge University for example and not just to provide free activity that makes makes people feel good but it also provides a platform for local students to develop their skills and integrate with their studies and so the environment itself will enable come but actually make it even better than that so for those audiences that don't want to maybe partake in the sporting activity or the musical activity they still want to enjoy our environment remember if you just want by products do it online but if you want to enjoy your leisure time head to places that show that they care for you and they want to welcome you we provide attractive places to dwell and one of the things that stood out for me I've mentioned briefly the brand process that we went through and the number of focus groups that we held when uncovering the purpose of our brand on one participant described Liverpool one as a place like no other and certainly not a shopping centre and on to events our events become key moments in our calendar reasons to visit at a particular time and some of them might be one-off events and some of them might extend for over a period of weeks appealing to different demographics two examples that I've selected here and take us from dogs to dinosaurs so the Liverpool one dog show first held last year as a new entry to our events calendar post-covid saw over 200 registrations for entries in the first three days of opening this and it was a hugely popular day in September on Chivas Park and the show is back this September due to popular demand on a much larger scale dinosaurs unleashed this ran in 2018 in quarter two where we had a full target of two and a half million visitors that we wanted to welcome into Liverpool one over a three-month period the aim of this promotion was to increase repeat visitation during the campaign period get people to stay on our estate for longer and we promoted an app to encourage people to download the dinosaurs unleashed app which would allow them to enjoy an egg hunt around our estate where they could scan a QR code on the on the egg they could hatch their dinosaur and as you can see here they could hatch t-rex and march their t-rex down Paradise Street they could take the dinosaurs into stores or they could go up onto the newly named Chivas Park where they could get up close and personal with some of our make-believe dinosaurs or send their own hatched dinosaurs into a battle arena this was hugely successful and we had over 20,000 downloads significant growth to our database and we continued to have a relationship with many of those families that took part in dinosaurs unleashed and continue to tell them about other activities that they can enjoy with their families as they form part of our database and regularly receive our e-communications. Other events that are hosted that you can see here supporting the retail calendar and helping to drive sales at key times as well student events held twice a year Halloween more and more shops you'll probably have noticed yourself really coming on board with Halloween as something seasonal for retail to get behind and bars and restaurants too so they put on their own activity and they were on their own promotions but we go the extra mile and we also in live in our public spaces so you can see here giant mechanical spider that paraded through the estate meeting customers and entertaining children now you can't get that online and of course there's our Christmas light switch on so it's moved from a traditional light switch on where now each year on the first Friday of the month in November our lights are turned on and we partner with many of the city's pantomimes and entertainment venues to give visitors a chance to sample some of what the city has in store for the season for some it's become a key date in their calendar and very much the start of Christmas and finally whilst looking at the changing reasons to visit earlier this year we launched our first heritage trail available on the app the audio tour takes you across 16 locations on the Liverpool one estate telling its history long before 2008 when Liverpool one was established in fact over 300 years of heritage this was delivered in close collaboration with national museums Liverpool and provides another free-to-enjoy experience alongside shopping and dining in the centre of the city you can appreciate even more how the centre place and authenticity in the makeup of Liverpool one is central to its evolution and place of choice for many brands considering the best location for them to trade and speaking about evolution it would be remiss not to consider our future journey without sustainability being at the core of thought processes as we as we move ahead the environment and the health of our communities has never been so top of mind as it has been since the impact of the pandemic when people stopped commuting and businesses stopped trading the world appeared cleaner and greener and the sky perhaps a little more blue we've been operating in a state of normalish now for a few months but things aren't quite as they were and experiences of the last couple of years through the pandemic has shown that new learned behaviours won't be forgotten in a hurry like many brands we have to look at what customers want and uncover any blind spots in what we're delivering we have to upskill in our knowledge base and seek ways to keep doing what we do well whilst keeping people and planet at the centre of our thinking thankfully we're not starting from scratch people have always been at the centre of our planning and the very nature of Chevasse Park which acts as a green lung in their city still holds strong our sustainability strategy rests on two interconnecting limbs people and environment represented here first you can see proudly displayed our green flag accreditation which we have maintained for Chevasse Park for several years and the Liverpool One Foundation which supports charities working with young people and mental health it's so so far donated almost three million pounds to charities across the Liverpool city region and we have a number of pillars within our sustainability strategy and you can learn more about these on our website but for the purpose of this session rather than go through all of those pillars I just wanted to share how sustainability can lead to innovation and creativity right the way through to when it comes to placemaking focusing on the environment first through creativity and consideration of the environment Liverpool One is home to tens of thousands of resident bees high up on the rooftops they so far produced two large batches of honey that have been distributed for free to local schools and charitable groups in the centre here you can see our book hotel tens of thousands of bugs playing their part in maintaining the biodiversity on Chevasse Park itself home to a rich and wide variety of pollinating plants and vertebrae and you can see on the right how much we love our trees with over 130 trees in Liverpool One we like to tell the importance of trees in managing air quality air quality reducing pollution and encouraging biodiversity last Christmas we partnered with the Mersey Forest to give Christmas trees away to be planted by our visitors and to people and communities our grant-giving foundation is central to the investment in young people especially those who struggle with their mental health we have built strong relationships with many children and with charities whilst raising funding for them is essential we also host a wide variety of activity across key dates such as youth mental health day or national mental health week to bring outreach workers into the heart of Liverpool One to engage with our young people directly they've worked out of units such as the body shop and waterstones to open up conversations of mental health outside of a typical school or medical environment and a simple initiative that I love can be seen from the table topper to the right hand side here running in several of our bars and our restaurants are happy to chat tables encourage people to sit down and just open up conversation shopping and dining is a social activity and we are social creatures and online becomes an obstacle to that there's a very irony in the term social media something that has made our youth less sociable more than ever when it comes to the physical sense so I've shared with you at quite a pace some examples of the role that placemaking the role that placemaking it takes in the future of our high streets and why it is so important when it comes to enlivening our cities or any other public space we can see how much a sense of place is determined by personal experiences social interactions and identities the experiences that can be enjoyed are best fulfilled though by working with those organizations and partners of that are within the city and actually become the very fabric of the city so I hope that we've made a good start to Liverpool's most modern chapter by understanding its inheritance its people our part of our purpose and the partners who operate here so whilst I've presented a huge amount of activity in a very short space of time I think that what we can see is the importance of collaboration we collaborate to draw on the creativity of people within and outside of our boundaries by putting people at the heart of what we do I'm sure that we have a key ingredient that is necessary in our success and I'm very excited about what the next 15 years has in store brilliant that's great and thanks very much Donna and that was a very interesting presentation for someone who's had a chance to visit Liverpool just a couple of times briefly for work meetings it's certainly a place that I'm very keen to go back to and have a look around properly now that we're hopefully as you say the pandemic it's not over but it's in the rear view mirror so we're now going to have a short Q&A session so our first question is it's from someone who says as an observation it says it seems like Liverpool one you're operating as a BID a bid a business investment district is that what what it stands for and is that the case okay so we operate we are a private management company that works alongside the Liverpool bid business improvement district whilst you will have picked up I've kind of explained we don't present ourselves as a shopping centre otherwise anybody that is looking for that you might arrive and say where is the roof that's not what I was expecting so we're very much part of the city centre but actually our internal working does mirror that of a shopping centre but we're a hybrid in many ways and it's very hard to find competitors that are or not even competitors it's very hard to find like-minded organisations that internally operate in the way that a traditional shopping centre might but actually present more like a city centre so we collaborate and work very very closely alongside the business improvement district which does a great job at supporting the wider retail district within within the city centre but in itself we aren't a bid right okay next question which market research providers surveys or methodologies would you rely on to inform your marketing approach okay that's a good question thank you for that so from a market research perspective and this is typical of a shopping centre set up we will undergo at least one peak exit survey a year which is traditionally where you would have seen market researchers out across the public realm talking to around a thousand visitors to ask them everything from the shops that they're shopping in the amount of time that they are spending within the shopping area ratings in terms of customer satisfaction whether that be sort of cleanliness ease of finding a store all of those sort of typical questions and that is done through that exit survey but we also undertake online brand tracking periodically and i think i mentioned before if i kind of rewind back to brand and you know we've got a very very clear understanding of our brand and we work very hard to live that brand and deliver but we need to undertake research to understand if that's actually landing and is that really what people are taking from all of the activity that we do and our online brand tracker is really useful because that allows us to reach people that are not visitors to Liverpool one and it allows us to ask questions as to why you know where are the barriers is it because they don't understand enough about what we do they don't understand perhaps about the strength of the offer or is it simply because they're not willing or prepared or able to travel into Liverpool or just satisfied with another option and you know we're really keen to understand if they are satisfied with the alternative because what have they got that we don't and can we learn from that so online brand tracking is really important to us okay now you've said that you don't have any comparable organizations to yourself so you're not like a Newcastle Gateshead initiative as such that type of destination marketing organization but you did use the word competitor when you were in your presentation there about competitor places elsewhere in the country so if you were to sort of say if you were benchmarking yourself against another large regional city or a similar type of destination where would you see your competitors being to get people to travel to Liverpool yeah this is this is a really interesting question because this depends on where we where we see ourselves and you know we say when we're not a shopping centre we're we are for great shopping in the way that other shopping centres do but there's so much more to it so we will take a look at the performance of traditional shopping centres and we'll also take a look at the performance of city centres and we tend to use those as context around our own or visitor numbers or our own business performance if we were to look and learn from other organizations those that are more relatable then we would look at the likes of say a Trinity Leeds which has also got more of a built environment but again sort of very much developed and delivered in the the heart of Leeds city centre so there are like-minded organizations and destinations that we will look at but we look at them through a different lens you know if we're looking purely at food and drink there are other areas for food and drink within the city but we don't compete against other areas within the city we work more collaboratively to bring people into Liverpool as a whole hope that that experience is a good one and that those people come back and enjoy different aspects of the city from time to time so we don't have a set defined list of competitors but we do look specifically at retail we do look at leisure we do look at city centres so for example in terms of bounce back from from Covid we'll look at the performance of other UK cities to see how our footfall you know does compare pleasingly seeing that our visitor numbers are far out performing the UK benchmark right now have you had to adapt your strategy during you know in the light of the last two years or have you been able to revert back to what your previous longer term plans were we've had to adapt our strategy in light the people certainly from a tourism perspective you know pre-pandemic tourism figures got to around 20% so around a fifth of our visitors were either domestic or international visitors because of the impact of Covid we became very reliant on a more hyper local audience and what we are seeing now over time as students are returning back to the city in particular that we are starting to sort of level out again but interestingly what one of the benefits I guess that we've seen in such such difficult times is that you know people were forced to holiday in the UK perhaps when they otherwise wouldn't have chosen to do and people have discovered Liverpool that perhaps wouldn't have discovered Liverpool if they were able to hop on a flight to Spain for example so we actually have seen an expansion of our of our catchment and we are seeing the people are traveling from some of those outer pockets of their sort of tertiary, quaternary catchment area and our job now is to ensure that that visitor experience is absolutely first class and that they want to keep coming back that's very interesting next question as one said that many of the slides show the big brands like John Lewis what does the retail mix in terms of independent shops and restaurants as opposed to national brands within Liverpool on itself because of the demand for units is so high you know if there's a if you see any hoarded units they won't be hoarded for long and that's because London has exited and a new brand is coming in and such is the rate of change in retail driven by you know customer behavior they'll love a brand for a period of time and then move on to the next one. Our mix in terms of independence we have a lot less independence but we do work very closely with those that are keen to come into Liverpool on a real success story behind brands like the dog bakery who started up as a as an independent trader on a in a cart and then took their kiosk and we've made some good introductions for the dog bakery with other independence such as bean coffee but what we do our intention and our aim is very much to work with the wider retail area and those people that know Liverpool one you don't there is a seamless integration within the wider city so you may not necessarily know when you're in Liverpool one or when you're outside of some of the areas of Liverpool one and I think our focus has to be on attracting retail into not just Liverpool one but the wider city as well and there is a strong and thriving zone on bold street for example for independence which is fantastic for the city you know it's very much about bringing people into Liverpool not just bringing them into Liverpool one and keeping them within these invisible boundaries that the boundaries that purposely weren't built to try and put people inside a particular zone but actually to navigate the way around the city whether that be from the waterfront through into the centre so independence are very important to the city more recently we've just opened the vintage store the largest of its kind in the UK which has taken over in the former Topshop unit so when you're marketing Liverpool one and the city as a whole do you do any joint marketing initiatives with retailers and partner brands yes we do we do so our retailers the best example I think is probably our student events and we collaborate with other organisations across the city but particularly give our retailers the platform to be able to give that friendly Liverpool welcome particularly to new students arriving in the city for the first time we also do a lot of work with regional press so regional magazines for example taking an example would be some of the higher-end brands and we'll work with them through various advertorials and media placements and then we'll work in collaboration with some of the regions events so Grand National and Aintree maybe one of them or even this weekend the Bolsworth international horse show we'll be sponsoring Ladies Day and we've got a number of brands that are working with us to have some exposure so Timothy Alton, Russell and Bromley, Gordon Ramsay's Bread Street Kitchen all names are quite keen to connect with that outer catchment and remind them that they are now here in Liverpool and they're not too far away okay so could you tell us how your marketing team is structured how many do you have in the team and how is it structured yes so well we used to call it a marketing team we now call it a place strategy team within which we do have a marketing and communications manager who is supported by a social media executive and a marketing executive we also have a team of two that are dedicated to supporting our occupiers so ensuring that we communicate with them daily ensuring that we do tell them about those joint marketing opportunities that they can get involved with we have a visitor experience manager who is responsible for delivering events supported by an executive so they're busy today making sure the pianos are already finely tuned and good to go out across the estate and for the next 10 weeks they're also working on a chess event a major chess event in Chavas Park which is exciting and then we've got a team of three in terms of commercialization so your earlier question you know in terms of joint marketing with partner brands so the commercialization team will work with brands such as Pokemon who come back always keen to come back and be in Liverpool and Liverpool one during the school holidays Charlotte Tilbury is a brand that's been in Coca-Cola various pop-up car shows so that's managed by a team of three within commercialization so we're a team of about a dozen in total covering commercialization occupier relations marketing and communications and events okay that's interesting to hear and I think we've got time for one final question and we seem to have romped through quite a few already and it is a final one and I know you're not just purely focused on shopping and retail but the final question is an observation what would you say to those who say that digital marketing or online shopping is killing the high street I know we've done quite a few sessions in the last two years with Cantor who have been monitoring different trends and behaviors and do you think some of that may be permanent or maybe we're reverting back to the way things work I think it's a really interesting question and I remember going back several years this seemed to be a very popular question with the media saying you know is digital online shopping now the death of the high street and I would say absolutely not I would I would actually say that this is very much about omni channel this is about how brands best embrace the opportunities that digital brings I think I reference the term store a showroom earlier on in the presentation and we are finding that a lot of stores are kind of approaching their own business models in that way where they're using the store as the opportunity to showcase brands and where people can get a feel for brands so they'll get involved in various activities and you know that drives sales and perhaps even more we've had a lot more inquiries from brands that are online only that actually want a short-term presence on the high street so very interesting to see how the two work together but certainly from our perspective you know it is a digital world and people are are digitally engaged and you know wired to their phones for the most part of the day in many instances but to be able to play in that space and showcase brands but actually people are you know social creatures we do crave togetherness and I think for us you know place making is about putting on added value opportunities for people to enjoy and for many of our brands to very much be part of that so long-lived digital but there is a real world out there as well so it's how the two connect and they absolutely do go hand in hand but the most successful brands will be able to focus on both online and offline for the greatest success. That's interesting to hear because there are certain things when you shop in that you do actually have to go and have a look at and have a sit on or anyway I think we'll have to end things now because we've run out of time but that's been fantastic thank you very much Donna so sadly that's all the time we have I'd like to say thank you to Donna and to the CIM Northwest Group for organising the event and we do hope you've enjoyed the session and found it interesting and worthwhile and perhaps you will be arranging a trip to the pool when you get a moment and we'll be back with our next webinar Express The Rise of the Meta-Humans Imagination Made Real which will take place on Monday the 4th of July at our usual time of 1 p.m. You'll find further details about the webinar on our events page where you will also be able to register for the session. So that just leaves me to say thank you to you for joining us today and hope that you've enjoyed our webinar so take care everyone and we look forward to welcoming you and again to our webinars in the future