The UK’s leading hub for media, creativity and innovation, its heart is in Salford but its ambition is global!
It’s a story that was forged in the fire and iron of the industrial revolution, the building of a canal that connected Manchester and Salford to the sea, turning both into global giants. Today, the brick smoke chimney stacks are replaced with towers of glass and steel as MediaCity trailblazes a digital revolution, a city of media, technology, creativity and innovation. A place whose waterside location, culture and street life put wellbeing front and centre.
MediaCity set out on a pathway for evolving their brand strategy to reposition it’s proposition first and foremost as a destination and place brand. In simple terms this new positioning promoted lifestyle, events, retail and leisure with more of a priority than traditional office and floor plate marketing.
Our brief was to develop a new website, visually re-invigorated by the new place branding direction that was being developed in parallel to the website. Our work also needed to factor in multiple stakeholder opinions that included MediaCity residents, business occupiers, retailers, university staff and students as well as marketing and communications input from Peel and MediaCity management.
The site required custom functionality which included a manageable occupier business directory, events calendar, what on promotion, food and hospitality and complex meeting room booking system.
MediaCity marketing staff also wanted the site to be multimedia focused with a simple method of editing content, uploading imagery, video and audio podcasts. It was an ambitious set of goals that we had to undertake to deliver on high expectations.
Bring it on!
Research and development formed the initial part of the project. There was considerable work to do in order to get everyone’s opinions, thoughts, hopes and dreams for the new MediaCity website. To honour the request for multiple stakeholder engagement we elected to chair and host co-design workshops and invited a wide cross section of project stakeholders and end users.
Working through our proceses of user groups and user profiling we gathered a wealth of research data that ultimately would feed into the structure and design of the website pages.
Functional aspects of the website were also discussed during the workshops and visual prototypes were created to allow users to visualise some of the complex topics being proposed.
We put a lot of time and effort into making our workshops interactive and engaging, so we were heart warmed by the positive feedback from the co-design workshop attendees, who included CEOs and business founders, media professionals, marketing directors, retailers, university students and local residents one of whom was a bundle of fun, a lady of 80+ years young who’d just moved into a beautiful modern waterside apartment in the heart of MediaCity.
Research and development formed the initial part of the project. There was considerable work to do in order to get everyone’s opinions, thoughts, hopes and dreams for the new MediaCity website. To honour the request for multiple stakeholder engagement we elected to chair and host co-design workshops and invited a wide cross section of project stakeholders and end users.
Working through our processes of user groups and user profiling we gathered a wealth of research data that ultimately would feed into the structure and design of the website pages. Functional aspects of the website were also discussed during the workshops and visual prototypes were created to allow users to visualise some of the complex topics being proposed. We were heart warmed by the positive feedback from the co-design workshop attendees, who included CEOs and business founders, media professionals, marketing directors, retailers, university students and local residents one of whom was a bundle of fun, a lady of 80+ years young who’d just moved into a modern waterside apartment in MediaCity.
The final website supports MediaCity’s evolution from a primarily commercial hub to a thriving destination brand. It:
The collaborative approach ensured stakeholders felt heard and represented, helping deliver a website that truly reflects the people who live, work and spend time at MediaCity.
