Work/Oxford Properties Shopping Centres
Scarborough Town Centre, owned by Oxford Properties, is the premiere shopping destination in Toronto’s east end. With more than 250 stores and over 22 million patrons each year, it ranks among GTA's top three grossing shopping centres with nearly all top fashion retailers as tenants. Ambitiously on its way to establishing itself as the Eastern Greater Toronto Area's dominant retail and leisure destination, the centre re-aligned its business goals. A supporting brand strategy was essential to signal change, along with a flexible toolkit to effectively steer it.
The goals were set. At the top was to reinforce STC as a long established, true destination brand. To reengage target users by underscoring visitor experience and service, we deployed a ‘usage’ versus solely (and typically) ‘purchase’ led, strategic brand approach.
Beginning with an immersive brand and experience audit our brand team articulated personas of target users. Once tested and confirmed, we devised a detailed brand architecture as foundation including a unique voice and ownable visual identity system to reflect its essence and ambition: culturally dynamic, vivacious and trend-setting.
In addition to eclectic and surprising combinations of typography, acronymic logo-mark and bold colour system, judicious use of images and other assets allows for seamless leveraging across digital, and specifically social platforms. We further built the visual library through harvesting candid imagery from fashion savvy patrons, opting in to our social programming. Altogether, working together to convey the brand’s desire to push the boundaries of what retail can be.
Brand & business strategy
Creative brand development
Creative content development
Photography & illustration development
Video
_unearthing experiential value
developed a fresh, comprehensive brand system included a new acronymic logo that expresses the shopping centre’s energy and diversity, while typefaces become graphic elements that emphasize STC’s high-end retail offerings such as Michael Kors, Sephora and Aritizia.
_tactics to reach out to an affluent demographic re-affirmed value
