We had a full house for our sponsorship seminar at our inaugural Reg&Co breakfast presentation last week on the topical subject of leveraging assets to increase revenue within brand/partnerships and looking at diversifying income streams. Thanks to our knowledge of the industry, one of our key strengths is the long-standing relationships we’ve enjoyed with our key clients of whom TFL and Landsec are two, having worked with both for many years!
So we were happy to hand over the floor to Mark Warne, Commercial Partnerships Director at Landsec and John Pizzamiglio, Advertising Strategy Lead at TFL to share their thoughts on the practicalities of innovation and diversifying to increase their revenue streams and how we help them achieve this.
Against a backdrop of a changing landscape for landlords of retail destinations, Mark Warne spoke about one of key initiatives that Reg&Co and Landsec are developing – the concept of events or pop up festivals within their retail centres, increasing footfall, awareness, spend per customer, whilst also allowing smaller brands to reach a larger audience, increasing brand awareness and reach. We’ve talked previously about creating brand events for interactions and Landsec have shown that this is a great option for them.
They kicked off with a Gin Festival in 4 locations over the summer, bringing in 10,000 customers and 40 gin brands, proving and testing the concept. There are plans to further develop the strategy into other areas such as wellness in the coming year. Mark commented, “We have worked with Reg&Co for more than 15 years – they are a vital source of knowledge for Landsec as we continue to grow and innovate. It’s valuable to share synergies and explore opportunities to collaborate with other businesses they represent to help deliver customer-centric commercial experiences.”
TFL is an entirely different organisation but with similar rates of change to Landsec, as John Pizzamiglio explained, having started out life as a transport company without a focus on commercial revenues. Against cuts to the budget and a fare cap, TFL has had to look at strategies to increase its revenue from non-core areas, advertising, brand partnerships, station re-naming, licensing. One of the most successful licensing campaigns ever was one that was initially almost laughed out of the room – a collaboration with TFL and Adidas. Who on earth would buy Underground themed trainers? Yet the ‘drops’ of initial stock sold out within minutes with queues for the limited edition range (See article)
One partnership that Reg&Co has introduced and is currently managing is the Mothercare and BABYZEN sponsorship of the iconic Baby on Board badge scheme across the network giving both brands access to the 130,000 mums to be who collect the badges each year.
As John said, “This was a great event highlighting how we collaborate and leverage Reg&Co’s extensive expertise & network to bring much-needed creativity & innovation to TFL’s commercial activity, helping us grow reach & revenues”
Thank you so much to Mark & John for sharing such interesting and entertaining facts and anecdotes about the realities that big organisations face to leverage & diversify their revenue streams in the face of increasing operational pressure.
- And thank you also to those who got up early to attend our sponsorship seminar, from the Affordable Art Fair, Battersea Power Station, Capital City, Capuchin Behavioural Science, England Athletics, Food Awards Photography, Invictus Games, IWSC, London Youth Rowing, Paralympics, Pearl & Dean, Post Office Ltd, RHS, Roald Dahl, Save the Children, Space & People, St Cuthbert’s, Streetgames, The Gut Stuff & Zoeva. It was really great to see you all, look out of the next one early in the New Year.