In recent years, there is a consensus among many shopping centers that brands are no longer enough. It is not that they have not recruited businesses or organized activities, but no matter how they combine brands, change exhibition displays, or creat

Short videos, micro dramas, and live broadcasts are reorganizing the entire consumption rhythm with the mechanism of content + algorithm. From online to local life platforms, and from entertainment to transactions, content has become the most promine

Internet platforms attract users through content, and then complete commercial transformation after forming a scale; physical businesses attract visitors through brand combinations, and then promote consumption through on-site experiences.

As attention shifts from 'space' to 'content,' if physical businesses still fail to grasp the power of 'content attraction,' they will become increasingly trapped in a situation of 'brand content failure, user unengagement, and decreasing visits.' So

In recent customer collaboration scenarios in the past two years, we often mention the concept of director power. For the new generation of shopping centers, in addition to brand operation, director power has become a new necessary capability that mu

Why has 'Space as Content Platform' become a new business capability? How can a shopping mall build a team with 'Director capability'? How can they create perceived freshness through low-cost content creation, increase visit motivation, and promote b

Attention has been reshaped by short videos, and consumption decisions are made within content

In the era of content as a channel, the user's consumption decision-making path has undergone fundamental changes quietly.

Why do I know this place?

Why should I make a trip?

The answers to these two questions in the past may be: I am familiar with this brand; I know about activities; and friends recommended me. But today, the more common answers are: "I swiped it","This video is very popular" and "They have been very pop

Users are not avoiding consumption, but rather moving the 'consumption trigger' to the content stream. In the past, it was 'I want to consume → looking for a place'; now it is 'I saw it → I want to go see it'. The logic of short video platforms actua

Content Trigger: Attract Attention with a Certain Curiosity/Emotion/Identity Symbol

Aggregate traffic: form interest tags and push them to precise audiences

Create a trend: Create a 'worth-visiting' destination through likes, comments, and following photos

Store verification: Users go to the location with content expectations

Re-shoot: Generate new content flow and rejuvenate platform ecology

This is the closed-loop loop of "content-visit-content again", and it is also the fundamental reason why many offline merchants today are desperately participating in "same city traffic" on Douyin, Meituan, video numbers, and Xiaohongshu-you must app

RET Real Estate Research Center

Brand attraction diminishes, content rhythm becomes the engine of freshness

Users' freshness is no longer determined by brands

In the past, the fundamental logic for shopping malls to attract customers' repeat visits was through 'brand turnover'. Introducing new brands, opening first stores, and adjusting structures were the most typical strategic paths. This logic was based

But reality is changing. In an era where short videos dominate perception, the way users perceive the world is no longer through a list of brands, but through content streams. Instead of saying 'I'm going to the mall with Lululemon and Heytea', they

Brand renewal is slow, but content rhythm can be fast

The more realistic problem is that the brand portfolio update speed is slow, and it is restricted by multiple factors such as contract cycles, decoration cycles, and business planning. Most brands sign contracts at least once a year, sometimes for th

What should we do? Instead of changing the brand, we need to change the way of "rhythm perception", that is, to compensate for the "brand renewal" with the "rhythm of content". Let users perceive that this place is always changing. It is not that the

Novelty is Ignited by Content Flow

Novelty is not just about visual stimuli, it is more like a sense of being seen - users come because they expect to see something different this time, or to create different content, or to participate in different activities. This is a sense of conte

A certain block will change its themed installation every week, and even the manually crafted scenes with very low costs will make people take photos. At 3 p.m., a certain shopping mall atrium will always have a three-minute flash interactive event,

These contents may not be loud, but they maintain the expectability of the space, thus creating a rhythmic sense of freshness.

From Brand Transition to Content Rhythm: Structural Transformation of the Freshness Mechanism

RET Real Estate Research Center

Real freshness does not come from fast decoration changes, but from rhythmic content updates.

The freshness of commercial spaces never relies on radical transformations but on operations. If short videos are expressions that compress the “content rhythm” to the extreme using algorithms, then shopping malls need to be like a “director” team, u

Brand is supply, content is flow, and rhythm is perception. A business without content and rhythm is like a body without heartbeat, no matter how big the brand name is, it is just cold. What really attracts users to stay is not how new you are, but t

From 'property management' to 'content director', team capabilities need to be upgraded and restructured

In traditional business logic, attracting merchants is about 'bringing in brands' and operations are about 'holding events'. However, in an era dominated by short videos and instant content, the true core competency is shifting from 'brand aggregatio

Space is a 'content generation field' rather than a 'rented container'.

AREA15 in Las Vegas, USA is a representative of early verification of this logic. It is not a shopping mall in the traditional sense, but an "experience content platform". Brands that have entered must have interactive attributes that can be photogra

After Boeing stopped production of the 747 model in 2022, AREA15 transformed a Boeing 747 fuselage manufactured in 1985, which was previously used for passenger transport in Brazil and later converted to a cargo plane, into an interactive art install

Flash × theatricalization, Slowing Down the Pace of the City

BOXPARK Shoreditch in London, England, also adopts a similar concept. This flash market made of containers features different music festivals, art exhibitions or brand collaborations every week. Moreover, the operation team of BOXPARK calls themselve

BOXPARK Shoreditch was built in 2011 using shipping container boxes recycled from an abandoned site spanning 500,000 square feet in Shoreditch, London. It initially served as a temporary retail experiment to stimulate public participation in the site

From 'Brand Display' to 'Content Director': The Capability Transition of Business Teams

In the past, shopping centers were organized more like property companies, but now they need to evolve into content creation teams. This shift is typically reflected at Omotesando Hills in Tokyo, Japan. Since 2010, this project has been centered on '

The 'Light Christmas Tree' at Hillsidemezama is a 8.4-meter tall spiral lighting installation designed by Yuji Oki, with its inspiration from the iconic spiral ramp in the design of Tadao Ando. The entire tree is made up of 40,000 Fresnel lenses, sym

The common point of these examples is that activities are not just an accessory, but the mother of brand communication. The operation team uses content arrangement to make the space self-propagating and form an online and offline closed loop of mutua

Director's Five-Force Model: Organizational Transition from Space to Content

From 'Building Malls' to 'Building Channels': A Need for Spatial Role Transformation

In the past, operating a shopping center was like managing a building; now, managing a shopping center is more like operating a channel. A channel has topics, rhythm, content, and audience; a commercial space should also have such an updating rhythm

In the future, the strongest business will not be the one with the most brands, but the one with the most subscriptions. This is the ultimate goal of content-driven business - to make commercial space once again a narrator of life, rather than just a

From 'Mall' to 'Channel': The Transition of Business Operation Paradigm

Conclusion

In this era where all attention is being harvested by algorithms, the only thing that physical businesses can hold onto is the authentic relationship between people and space. The online world can accelerate infinitely, but it cannot replicate the wa

In the future, the real competitive power of shopping centers will come from the circular system of space × content × social: space provides the stage, content creates motivation, and social forms memory. When this cycle forms a self-reinforcing mech

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