Immersive Placemaking, Email Best Practices, 21 Conferences & Rodents Galore! 🦫🐀

We all know that “experiential” is the buzzword everybody’s hype for these days — and with good reason. As we grapple with what it means for our human existence, while we become ever more integrated with the web, smart tech, smart devices, and digital content, the need to meld IRL to URL is driving human experience. Back in the day, you might’ve cut up your fave magazines and pasted collages on your bedroom mirror, made a slam book, or pressed flowers into your diary. Today, we not only binge-watch shows like Stranger Things at home, we crave the ability to immerse ourselves in the show. And the experience marketing geniuses at Netflix have come up with an ingenious way to marry real life and content with the new Netflix House. Launching soon in two former department stores, one in Dallas and one at King of Prussia, PA’s famed mall, these types of experiential immersion are becoming an increasingly popular way to engage fans with brands.

From a place management perspective, we know PLENTY of districts with dead or dying malls that would leap at the opportunity for a Netflix House. We were curious about the one in KoP, and went right to the source for some insights. We chatted with Rachel Ammon, Director of Marketing and Communications for the King of Prussia District, who shared some intel with us. You see, KoP is in a fairly unique position in that their mall is one of the few “gold star” retail hubs nationally that’s killing it in a post-pandemic economy. Rachel shared that, ”For Netflix, it’s all about the success of KoP Mall. Our retail occupancy rate is at 97% right now throughout the Township, and we are exceeding pre-pandemic trips, especially on the weekends. In 2024, our daily visitor count frequently peaked over 270,000,” and she added that, “We’re thrilled to welcome Netflix House to King of Prussia this fall. Netflix chose a thriving community to invest in for their first location in the country, and their arrival adds even more excitement to our dynamic mix of shopping, dining and entertainment. This launch highlights King of Prussia’s continued momentum as a must-visit destination.” 

Netflix isn’t new to the experiential game, and as noted in this piece from Marketing Brew, there’s plenty more in store for fans of Netflix shows IRL. And clearly Netflix isn’t the outlier here. Immersive experiences around the globe are being aided by technology, which are a draw for many downtowns — as evidenced by the popularity of saleable experiences and brand extensions like the Van Gogh Immersive Experience, WNDR Museum, and the Museum of Illusions.

Don’t have the footfall to attract the likes of a Netflix House to your (gasping) mall or downtown? You can still placemake your way into infamy with the kind help and support of pioneering creatives and fabricators like A3 Visual (the team behind Downtown San Francisco Partnership’s award-winning “Let’s Glow” activation, Le Monde Studio’s interactive installations, or Novaby’s excellent chops in AR/VR/XR.

Photo credit: Envato Elements By seventyfourimages

We love to give credit where credit’s due, and while we’ve been quietly fanboying the email newsletters of “In Downcity”, a community/developer-driven collab for a while now, we wanted to draw your attention to their fantastic weekly e-blasts. Entitled “In Downcity” (how they refer to the downtown district colloquially), the newsletter should be viewed as best practice for so many reasons. While many districts publish regular e-blasts (and believe us, we read a LOT of them on the reg), this group does an applause-worthy job with their content strategy. Here’s why we 🖤 their e-blasts:

• The frequency is weekly, so the district is staying constantly top of mind with their subscribers

• It’s succinct! While many districts cram-jam their newsletters with scrolls and scrolls upon scrolls of info that most definitely leads to click-fatique and drop-off, In Downcity only presents three simple, digestible top hits per week. In this scenario, less is more!

• The template is clean and straightforward, with no competing links, ads, features or nonsense to distract you. Boom, boom, boom, DONE!

• Each e-blast is merely one scroll. Keep it simple, stitches!

• The content shows a breadth of the PVD experience while not overwhelming the reader.

• Each edition includes a browser link for shareability, and we all know that’s best practice.

When you’re ready to revamp your email program, revise your content strategy, execute an email hygiene program, launch an opt-out strategy, update your templates, need industry benchmarks — or just need overall guidance on refining your comms and amping your performance metrics, give us a shout! We love making marketing work harder and smarter for your org.

Photo credit: Envato Elements By Christopher_Boswell 

… that city living can really change you? We’re not talking Carrie Bradshaw and the crew from Sex in the City, personal growth, or street smarts. We’re talking about literal evolution — in the skeletons, teeth, and bodies of rodents! In this fascinating recent piece from Popular Science, authorities in evolution are digging into some fairly rapid changes that have been taking shape in the local chipmunk and vole populations. Teams at Chicago’s Field Museum tapped into the institution’s collection of preserved rodents and noticed some startling changes. Studying hundreds of voles and chipmunks from the region over the past 100+ years, they determined that the chipmunk skulls are becoming larger, while their teeth are becoming narrower. And with the voles, their inner ears are getting smaller. Scientists aren’t exactly sure what’s causing these rapid changes, but it’s most likely due to the urban impacts of humans on their environments. Coexisting in human habitats is radically different than the pristine wilds around the Windy City that preceded current rodent populations. Things like access to processed human foods and louder metropolitan environments are generating rapid evolutionary changes, but much remains to be studied. So the next time you’re fed up with the noise, bags of garbage in the streets, and all the other creature comforts that are part of the urban experience, please take a minute to think of our diminutive neighbors, and please never forget Pizza Rat.

Photo credit: Envato Elements By wirestock

Our friend, author and ardent urbanist Diana Lind has one of the best Substacks out there today. As an exclusive bonus for our readers, she’s generously lowered the paywall, (mille grazie), so you can access her recent post. Diana rounded up 21 upcoming global conferencesyou don’t wanna miss! It’s a quick read and chock-full of interesting tidbits. FYI — if you subscribe to Diana’s Substack, let her know we sent ya! And if you attend her subscriber-only event in Philly, hit us up! We’re always down for a klastch and a coffee with UPMO peeps.

Photo credit: Envato Elements By wirestock

We were today years old when we first heard about Torrington, Alberta, and this charming agricultural hamlet in Canada’s western province of Alberta is now squarely on our bucket list. Why? Three words, and you’ll understand after you watch this video:

• Gophers

• Taxidermy

• Phyllis!!

If you’ve been to Torrington or plan to go, let us know!

Photo credit: Envato Elements By mstandret

“We’re thrilled to welcome Netflix House to King of Prussia this fall. Netflix chose a thriving community to invest in for their first location in the country, and their arrival adds even more excitement to our dynamic mix of shopping, dining and entertainment. This launch highlights King of Prussia’s continued momentum as a must-visit destination.” — Rachel Ammon, Director, Marketing & Communications King of Prussia District