Key Takeaways - ICSC@New England 2022

Finally after two years of not having the ICSC New England show, 2022 (and a small committee of dedicated workerbees) brought it back in action. The show was located at the BCEC, typically flip-flopping between the Hynes and the BCEC, and included numerous events throughout the city and beyond. It attracted just over 700 registrants (at its highest, has attracted nearly 1300) as well as some incredible speakers.

I had the amazing opportunity of hosting and presenting two sessions at this year's show including a 45 minute presentation on Personal Branding - How to Build & Live Your Brand and a panel discussion on How to Implement a Successful Social Media Strategy. Though the combined minutes seemed to be extensive, the actual time went astonishingly fast. More on this later.

I was able to attend mostly everything, though the closing of my sister's new home and its arrangements pulled me away from part of the Keynote and Capital Markets discussions. I only made the tail end of Fireside Chat with Greg Hill but he was awesome. Below are some of my key takeaways from the conference from most everything else including Golf, City of Boston Waling Tour, Medtail, Restaurants Discussion, Gender & Diversity, Keynote, and my two sessions on Personal Branding and Social Media Strategy.

Sweaty yet Successful Golf Tournament - Was record breaking heat but everyone seemed to still have fun. Kim Sluter and Chis McMahon arranged the event this year at Sandy Burr in Wayland. I heard the first 9 were a blast but after that most people melted. Golf sold out this year!

City of Boston Walking Tour went to new heights - This event also sold out! Travis Ginsberg and Tom Phillips organized this event and stops included: The Steps of Downtown Crossing, Tontine Crescent,?Winthrop Center, 100 Federal Street and High Street Place Boston Food Hall. Winthrop Center, come 2023, will be the 4th tallest building in Boston and this group got to gear up with some hard hats and take a tour. Whitney Gallivan closed the event after speaking at High Street Place, which I've been hearing such good things about, Boston's newest and hottest lunch spot destination.

Welcome Reception at 75 on Liberty Wharf did not disappoint - I have to say, this was the perfect venue for what the event was. It was just the right size to fit all attendees with it's well air-conditioned inside and ample seaside seating outside. I saw many familiar faces, in fact not too many new ones but also was missing a lot of familiar faces as well.

Retailer Runway - I can't write about the show and not include a snip-it about the Retail Runway. Though we tried extremely hard this year to rebrand this session, we stayed tried and true to the ICSC history and kept it as Retailer Runway. Whatever it is branded, it is a TON of work to gather 10 retailers and organize the presentations and music for this event. Hats off to Sam Kallmerten and Lindsay Desmettre for making this come together as it's one of the most well attended events at the entire conference. We made some small progress from a sustainability standpoint as we had a QR code that led to the retailer information.

Personal Branding, showcasing the human side to CRE - Thank you to ICSC, Michael Branton and Lindsay Corsino for the opportunity to speak at the conference. I so enjoyed talking personal branding to this CRE audience as I had built the presentation out specific to this audience incorporating relevant stats and those of inspiration in the industry. A complement to this session, we offered free bio photos by our incredible photographer, Elisif Photography. She ended up having 37 people take her up on the opportunity. What a win! Some key takeaways included:

• A reminder that people want to do business with other people not companies
• Learn more about yourself, showcase YOU - everyone else is already taken
• Share your story

Zero in on your niche and provide value, by doing this you establish credibility and build trust

• Do things that will help you become more visible in our industry like join a conference planning committee, hold LinkedIn Live events or write thought-leadership articles
• Clean up your online profiles, make sure your profiles across the board are cohesive
• If you want engagement then you must engage, champion other people's successes as well

Creating a Successful Social Media Strategy & the infamous donut wall - I had the pleasure of organizing this awesome panel of four women business owners/founders/CEOs. Just there, I think we broke some kind of ICSC record haha. The inspiration behind this session was a recent LinkedIn pole I had sent out. I asked what people's greatest marketing challenge is and gave four options. The most chosen answer by far was Social Media Strategy. So, I rounded up some incredible social media stand-outs. As part of the session, we had a donut wall filled with delicious Blackbird Doughnuts. The idea here was to point out that with social media - the conversation starts online but solidifies and continues in physical space...like a Blackbird Doughnut shop, or in our case on the ICSC show floor. I mention the infamous donut wall because it was one of the most agonized over logistical nightmares between getting heath code permits and dodging a $1,000 fee to bring in food, yes folks, that would have been a $50 donut you'd be consuming haha.

Panelists included: Rebecca Roth Gullo, President, Blackbird Doughnuts | Isabelle Palmer, Co-Owner,?Laurel Grove | Allison Yee, Founder & CEO, UPNEXT

Key Takeaways from the Social Media Strategy Panel included:

• Be clear about your objectives!
• Identify your target audience
• Transparency is key, be yourself and openly communicate
• Build human connection
• Get in front of the camera, show various sides to yourself and your business - Show that there is a real person behind the scenes
• Start digital and transition to physical

It’s an old school industry, not everyone wants to communicate the way YOU want them to, you have to be open to other methods

• This is not something to be delegated to your intern, your brand is precious, as are your social media channels
• Social media channels and THEIR objectives are always changing as well so you need to therefore continue to work on your strategy over time
• Metrics and analytics are important to understanding if your strategy is working or not

Gender & Diversity: A much needed topic for a CRE show, a place where you will find little diversity. A lot of the discussion talked about the importance of having a mentor as well as putting a system in place to be more diverse and inclusive. When you develop your system at your company (hopefully more organically), it was suggested that the group be large and include all levels but also top executives. One interesting point brought up by Bryan of WS Development was the idea of there needed to be ROI - if you're not doing this - than what are the costs.

Speakers included: Kim Sluter, Vice President, New England Construction | Bryan Furze,?CRRP, CDP, Senior Vice President, Leasing, WS Development | Sarah Lemke, Senior Vice President, Project Development, New England Development | Jae’da Turner,?Founder & Managing Director, Black Owned Bos.

Medtail Panel - Aside from finding the word itself quite annoying, "medtail" was apparently coined first by a New York Times article, according to one of the panel speakers anyway.

Panelists included: Stefan Zelich, Founder, FOCUS Healthcare Realty, Brian Boulter, Vice President, Growth & Development, 42 North Dental, Evan Eisenhardt, Senior Vice President, Leasing, Linear Retail, and Jamie Goldberg, Vice President Real Estate & Development, One Medical.

Key Medtail Take-aways:

1. Discussed the advantages of having medical in shopping centers
2. The fact that New England/Massachusetts have been more receptive and less issues with zoning (vs. other markets like New York and Miami), some areas mandate state and local inspections. (Of course the audience loved hearing that MA was better than NY in this instance haha)
3. Changes from during the pandemic to now in healthcare and the way people behave... People were not getting the care before because they didn’t want to go in as they were nervous about COVID, being in the retail setting has helped, in retail they were able to operate, they did virtual primary care, certain care is over video vs other services you need to come in for
4. Hiring challenges, harder during the pandemic
5. How partnerships with landlords is more important now than ever
6. Utilizing analytics is key as well as look-a-like campaigns
7. Medtail looks for good co-tenancy
8. Landlords had to navigate other tenant concerns during the pandemic when medtail tenants were hosting on-site testing
9. Medical is capital intensive from a landlords perspective
10. Medtail looks for the long-term, they stay at locations 20, 30, 40 years

There was a funny theme that played throughout this session which included the hashtag "hitthedate". I find this particularly interesting because no matter which session you did attend at the show, a hashtag, social media reference and/or talk about a company's "brand" was spoken. Though many in the industry choose not to value the importance of marketing in CRE, it is literally all around us, every day. Jamie even noted, "We need a pipeline of locations. If we want to open 40 locations then we need to look at 80 or 90 sites. We need our brand out there in the market."

The New Normal for Restaurants Panel - This panel of mostly fast-casuals emphasized their favoritism of sites that offer drive-thrus, mentioned many or most sales are from take-out, analytics play into their business in a huge way, and that you can't treat all customers the same - some people love the interaction and others simply want to grab and go as fast as possible.

Panelists included: Rachael Diharce, Vice President, Leasing, Samuel & Associates | David DuBois, Owner, Franklin Restaurant Group & Tasty Burger | Alana Eagley,?Senior Store Development Manager, Starbucks Coffee Company | Clint Mattson, Principal Development Lead, Restaurant Development, Chick-fil-A, Inc. | Brian Sommers, Chief Development Officer, Jersey Mike’s.

Key Take-aways from the Restaurant panel:

1. From Alana/Starbucks - The suburban footprint has gotten bigger but the urban store is getting smaller. For the suburban stores, the added square footage is for more refrigeration and more staff zones.

• We are more flexible now but like having a drive-thru, people are more used to ordering on their phone, our lines are crazy but people do it!
• She complemented Chick-fil-A and their drive-thru

Customers want different things, some people want their coffee and want to get out, others want to hear their name and see the barista and chat?

• Exploring two lane drive-thrus but don’t see it shifting back to more people wanting to stay in-store vs. get and go

2. Clint/Chick-fil-A?

• We focus on drive-thru as well
• We are also most focused on our app
• Our orders have jumped 20-30%
• We want face to face experience?
• 60% of our sales are from the drive through. When our dining room did reopen it was slow because we were cautious around safety of our employees?

3. Brian/Jersey mikes?

• Trying to get to 1,200 sf

We are now looking at real estate with locations that have limited parking where before, we we would never do that, we are doing more delivery now?

• We do double-points-day and people come in for it!
• Everything is fresh cut, we are like Chick-fil-A where we focus on the customer experience, we'd like the face-to-face to stay as much as possible?
• You don’t need best employees or best looking employees, we have a ghost kitchen, just manufacturing the product, we can access new trade areas we can’t normally pay, in NY, leather district, this is showing us that we can test out the new market, shows us if it resonates with the consumers there - the ghost kitchen is Jersey mikes concept, there are 30 kitchens, working out well for us
• Our brand is very important

4. David/Tasty Burger

• We need to make sure we have seating
• We have geofencing tracking?
• Fenway, see building across the street, like 8% of people go from out store to across the street
• People stopped coming in as much, we have the bar but depending on what neighborhood you’re in, we adjust accordingly, a lot of people come in and get their food vs pick it up, there are more people coming in to get it now vs just getting delivery
• This is an industry of operational prowess
• When you look at quick service, a lot of the young customer base, AI could be a factor but we want the team to be invested, a restaurant is only four walls, it’s the people that are servicing, that is the environment of the restaurant, my nephew wants the minority report!
• Uber contacted us and said, ok here are the 15 most requested items that people are looking for, things like chicken parm for example, we know people that are successful with like a satellite kitchen but in general ghost kitchens for me they need to be operationally very sound

When looking for staff, most success is when we talk to the employees we have and try to bring in people they know, we make entry point very easy, there is a lot of training, up the pay, a lot is what are you paying people

• The bars drove people but we are going down the rabbit hole with geofencing, it's really pinpointing

Keynote: Spencer Levy, Global Chief Client Officer & Senior Economic Advisor, CBRE. I unfortunately missed quite a bit of Spencer's presentation but I've seen him speak before and he's insanely insightful yet entertaining. His presentations are chock full of charts but mixed with movie clips and other fun anecdotes. He has a podcast called, The Weekly Take for CBRE that features an array of high-profile guests.

Some Keynote Takeaways:

• Cars will come down
• The labor market is strong, there are vast amount of jobs, more than workers
• Wage inflation

He thinks we’ll have a good year but not 2021 levels

• Retail market share went up this year
• Can’t get an office loan right now
• We will rebuild the office sector
• Office will come back

This kills marketers' dreams - Though the show and its team overcame so many obstacles and the actual show planning was actually pretty flawless (you rock, Dionne and Nadine!) I can't write about the show and not mention the huge missed opportunity - None of the speakers name, companies or bio photos were in the printed program. This was a HUGE miss in my opinion because of so many factors. First, it's an additional selling point to speakers, to have their name and company name in the program. Second, on day-of, if people only see the title name and not WHO is speaking, you only have half or maybe even less, of the draw. I know if people saw my panel speakers names and companies, we would have had a butt in every chair. The sessions overall weren't bleak but they weren't overly well attended. Of course, the keynote rendered the best audience, about 200...but where were the other 500?? Side note, why are we even doing printed programs? Why don't we QR to the website and put a digital flipbook program together with all of the information we'd like including graphics and photos...let's save some trees!!

Congrats to all of the amazing committee members on a fabulous show! Michael Branton, Jamie Sullivan, Travis Ginsberg, Chris McMahon, David Steinberg, Tom Phillips, Aaron Huntley, Matt Nadler, Lindsy Desmettre, Kim Sluter, Rachael Diharce, Patrick Paladino, Sam Kallmerten.