Integrating a New Shopping Mall into a Community Through A Lifestyle Platform

Moving the focus from hardware to experience, developing a curatorial team that can create new experiences

With many projects concentrated in the Taipei area, JUT Development focuses on urban development, specifically with residential and office building projects, collaborations with creators and renovating historical houses to slowly make over the cityscape. Seeking to create a better connection between the neighborhood and the local communities for its latest venture, JUT is opening up a new shopping mall in Dazhi. 

However, during this process, they faced a key issue – how do they shift their focus from hardware towards software, such as experiences and content? For example, how do they break through the operating methods of traditional shopping malls and provide value that goes beyond the act of the purchase itself?  How do they build a curatorial team that has the ability to plan events, exhibitions and other “software” activities, and not just solely rely on the popularity of the store alone? How do they build and expand a long-term B2B network with unique brands and their collaboration partners to differentiate themselves from other shopping malls?

To solve this set of questions, Loftwork Taiwan first divided the lead up to the opening in 2022 into three stages so that JUT can develop the community step-by-step and organize its team. As part of the first step of the plan, Loftwork also helped create a new platform, called “Nok Nok”, for the shopping malls.

As a door represents a platform that connects two new worlds, “Nok Nok” – which comes from “knock knock” – is a media outlet for the shopping mall that connects different fields, experts and brands. Loftwork Taiwan is powering ahead with helping JUT with its transition between hardware and software and move towards the mall’s opening in 2022.

In order to share information about current market activities in tandem with the website to reach more people, Loftwork implemented a promotion strategy to strengthen their social media presence by posting four to five times a week. 

The website is a gateway to the offline – from experiences to activities – and new networks

Online media is multi-faceted and varied, but Nok Nok is unique in that it places “experiences” at its core. Loftwork and JUT dedicated time and resources into information design, art design and content strategy to complemente offline workshops, activities, pop-ups and other real-life activities. They then created related articles that audiences can read before experiencing the activities. Recaps and articles about the event to satisfy audiences’ curiosity then completed the user journey.

The Nok Nok website is not just a platform for distributing information about activities for the public to take part in; it is also a window connecting the mall in the Dazhi area with various brands. The goal is to make online brand interviews a starting point, and then – through hosting pop-ups and other offline activities – develop good working relationships with these brands so that they can become reliable “PEERS.”

Because B2B collaborations was the main mission for the team, being “movement driven” also became very important. A brand with excellent quality and self-persistence must be motivated to to work with other companies. As a platform, Nok Nok possesses a deep understanding and support of brand “action”, planning a dazzling array of online articles and offline activities. In interview articles introducing a brand’s background, Nok Nok also showcases the richness of each brand through not just text and photos alone but also through videos and Spotify playlists.

“My relationship with the JUT team began in 2019, when I provided assistance for community development strategies such as for shopping mallsl. Now that we have arrived at this stage in 2020, we have to use different types of media and event execution techniques to deliver the message to the user. Even though this is JUT’s first shopping mall, they have not seen their lack of experience as a strength, instead choosing to view it as a strength, as they believe the team will thus not be bound by existing frameworks and have the courage to achieve feats that other malls can’t. Their optimistic attitude also stimulated me. I will be deeply involved in this facility’s project in terms of designing the interior traffic flow and membership systems, helping JUT to create an all new customer experience that hasn’t existed in Taiwan before.”

– Loftwork Taiwan Senior Creative Director 藤原悠子

“Nok Nok is a new lifestyle planning media and platform that hopes to inject interesting and engaging content into JUT Dazhi Shopping Mall that will be opened in the future. Loftwork and JUT are like partners, frequently exchanging suggestions and adjusting the Nok Nok website and content to make it more perfect. In the development of the website design, both sides reaped many benefits and are looking forward to what the future holds.”

– Loftwork Taiwan Assistant Creative Director Zoe Kuo