Case Study – Coming Home for Christmas
Project Overview:
Larger than life and abundant, Chas Clarkson’s timeless and nostalgic Christmas package – ‘Coming Home for Christmas’ – offered Westfield Living Centres a brilliant landscape full of joy, tradition, intrigue and surprise. Around every corner was another delightful moment, another adornment story, another hallmark to the exhilaration of Christmas for the young at heart – indeed for all those that revel in Christmas.
Every day of every week brings another reason to arrive at Westfield. For gift planning and packaging, for celebration, or for pure entertainment.
Two.
Project Brief:
In 2017, Scentre Group needed to significantly “jump shift” its approach to Christmas in Westfield centres across Australia and New Zealand, ensuring that they created a best-in-market experience for their customers across every brand touchpoint.
Scentre Group saw a big opportunity for Christmas decorations to influence their customers’ experience, putting on an impressive “show” every day over the 8-week activation period. They saw decorations as a key driver of ‘festiveness’ and Chas Clarkson as a key partner in helping them to transform and create an exclusive, holistic decoration program for all Westfield centres.
Three.
The Strategy:
The goal for Scentre Group was to have their customers think “Westfield is my go-to destination for shopping at Christmas – a magical and memorable experience for me and my family and I think I will visit more often over the Christmas period”.
The design brief was to create a new suite of decorations with a traditional look, timeless feel and vibrant colour palette, without compromising on quality. The suite of decorations needed to tell a story and create a unifying theme from ‘entry’ to ‘exit’ for customers, allowing them to indulge and immerse themselves in a world of Christmas. And the designs needed to be totally unique to Westfield centres.
Four.
Challenges:
When Scentre Group approached Chas Clarkson with the brief in May 2017, traditional deadlines for meeting production timelines in order to deliver a project of this scale had already passed. Concepts needed to be imagined and developed, industrial designs completed, with manufacture and delivery achieved by the end of October – for 14 Westfield Living Centres across Australia and New Zealand. To say that timing was a challenge was an understatement.
A collaborative approach with effective communication and disciplined timing were crucial across every aspect of the execution. From creative approval, working through creative specifications, prototyping and engineering – right down to the retention of numerous off shore manufacturing facilities for months at a time to deliver on the colossal production.
Five.
The Result:
Working with the Scentre Group Team – both with Head Office and in centres – proved an extremely positive experience for Chas Clarkson. Through significant challenges, we were able to deliver a high-impact project that had a long and lasting effect on the community.
Customer feedback proved to be overwhelming positive and directly impacted retail sales through the duration of the 2017 campaign. The benchmark for retail Christmas experience had been raised and with further refinement and enhancement, our designs continued to impact Westfield customers for years following.
