Brand and Retail Leasing

When it comes to retail leasing, prospective tenants know what they’re looking for, and it revolves around the numbers. They know roughly what they can gross per square foot, how much traffic they need to generate their revenue goals, and what to budget for TIs. So unlike ground-up development brand strategy, where the recommendation is to please, please stop repeating metrics that don’t mean anything to an audience of laypeople, with leasing brand strategy the goal is to make the numbers reflect a story that has emotive value.

If you’re trying to lease a property in an area you believe is up-and-coming, it’s not enough to just quote the nearby development pipeline figures and point to nearby rising rents, you need to tie those figures back to a narrative that resonates - that explains why this trend is not just believable, but inevitable. It’s like how people buy cars. Time and again studies show that car buyers base their choice on how the car looks (an emotional choice), and only later, after the fact, do they craft a rationale based on analytical reasons to justify what their heart wants.

So while the first order of business is to by all means have the numbers handy, make sure you’re telling a story about the unique benefits inherent to your property’s neighborhood and how that specific combination of benefits just so happens to be exactly what the region is starting to realize it desperately needs.