Westfield

How to distil 11 years’ worth of brand and destination building with one of the most innovative malls in the world?

Our 11 year journey with Westfield started with concepting the Village in London White City, together with its ambition to sell Luxury in the UK where, up until that point, luxury was never sold in Malls. We worked closely with the team on the full 360 strategy – everything from its name, brand & identity, and service offer, right through to the recommended partners, services, and tenants such as Louis Vuitton and Prada – with the rest following shortly after.

This led us to defining the vision and strategy for the whole Westfield experience from retail partners, to food and beverage propositions to how we engaged with the local communities. In doing so we broke every expectation around how a mall should behave. Each year, a series of seasonal campaigns drove the fame and footfall needed to create commercial and cultural momentum.

Maintaining this momentum meant continually communicating with and engaging multiple audiences over time, in a drumbeat of always on activity, events, and ground breaking entertainment that punctuated the calendar. Highlights include Justin Bieber turning on the Christmas lights, Naomi Campbell opening a preloved fashion store, shop, launching Rhianna’s latest album hosting Jeremy Della’s exhibition in partnership with Vuitton – continually giving people fresh reasons to visit, spend time with, and love Westfield.

Westfield White City became the foundational blueprint for all future Westfield launches, one of which was Westfield’s second London location in Stratford. Before the area was even an established

destination we began establishing a customer base by working with the local community - from setting up the Skills Academy to the Studio East Bursary with Tracey Emin.

With these two sights we effectively ‘bookended’ London – two destinations proudly at London’s cultural edge, exemplars for large scale destination-building globally. Portas has subsequently worked with the team on the conceptual visions for all future Icon centres, including New York and Milan. Our work with Westfield is a true example of vision through to action over time, culminating in a $25BN sale in 2017. We are currently reimagining Croydon in London.