Places and spaces are more than land or bricks and mortar. They’re where people create new ideas, build memories and plan futures. No two places are the same; each has its own history, purpose and sense of community. Place shaping is about creating places ‘want’ to be in, rather than just ‘need’ as today’s consumer has access to what they want more easily than ever before, making the value of experiential key to success. Our team's place shaping experience helps clients to uncover the nature and experience of a place, exploring everything from landscaping through to marketing.

We use real-life data and insight to provide bespoke place shaping insight including but not limited to VISA and Barclaycard spending, acorn profiling, DestinationCore Insights and place firmagraphics. Our team have a wealth of experience in utilising rich data to provide robust place shaping strategies and recommendations.

Customer experience sits at the heart of our agency. Our team follow a 4-step couch to centre review of our locations. This process involves exploring the awareness, consideration, visit and loyalty stage from a customer's perspective. Through this, we are able to gain a more objective view of locations we work with and identify appropriate recommendations at each stage.

The success of a town or city centre relies on strong leadership, collaboration and innovative thinking. Having a suitable vision which is true to the DNA of a place can lead to future investment, notable improvement and measurable success. Our team have worked with numerous locations to help them think out of the box and break down barriers. Using quantitative and qualitative research methods we are able to diagnose the issues, highlight a strategy to respond to them, and recommend tactics to fix them.

Research underpins everything we do in place shaping and marketing and needs to be constantly refreshed. We can support you with the faciliation of focus groups, through to online survey creation and delivery aswell as bespoke commissions such as City Centre Retail Strategies or Vision documents which tend to involve the management of numerous specialist agencies on your behalf.

Perception vs reality is a fundamental dichotomy in the world of place shaping. Our place audits provide clients with a couch to centre review of the customer journey uncovered via assessment of the physical and social characteristics that make up that particular location. This could mean exploring the initial architectural purpose and understanding its DNA, through to getting under the skin of the social media reviews left online by visitors. Once an audit has taken place, our team focus on realistic opportunities and improvements which can be taken forward to enhance the appeal of a location, often helping organisations make strong business cases to investors to help reform and restore a place.

Marketing budgets fall under constant scrutiny across town/city centre management organisations and retail and leisure landscapes. Demonstrating return on investment is hugely important. Our team have practical experience in the fair assessment of an organisation's marketing, appreciating the internal and external demands this often bears. When auditing a shopping centre or BID, our team applies logic from the latest industry trends, budgeting benchmarks, human resources, and much more.

Supporting the mobilisation of new buildings or existing destinations is a key part of the support work we do - working with teams across BIDs, town centres, shopping and leisure destinations and outlets to ensure there is swift and seamless marketing integration into Savills or to our clients portfolios.

Our team of place experts are often called upon to join panels across the UK discussing the high street, destinations and the delivery of places for people. Our Directors support clients and national organisations with Thought Leadership presentations and guidance..