TIKTOK
Our TikTok account has now been live for 12 months and has delivered consistent organic growth, demonstrating strong audience appetite for Harpur Centre content. To fully establish TikTok as a core marketing channel and position it as the dominant platform for engaging younger audiences, we now recommend supporting this momentum with paid investment.
While organic activity has successfully built foundations, organic growth alone will limit reach, scalability, and speed of impact. Strategic paid activity will allow us to significantly increase visibility, accelerate follower growth, and convert engagement into measurable brand awareness and footfall. We therefore recommend the following initiatives:
Allocate an annual budget to collaborate with a local or regional influencer on a quarterly basis. This approach will deliver access to an established and highly relevant follower base. Influencer partnerships will strengthen cultural relevance, reinforce Harpur Centre’s local positioning, and rapidly increase reach, engagement, and follower growth, particularly among younger demographics.
Install a TikTok Wall within the centre to and share content during their visit. This physical-to-digital activation will drive user-generated content, increase mentions and tags, and amplify organic reach beyond our owned channels. It also reinforces TikTok as a key engagement platform within the centre, supporting dwell time, repeat visits, and social sharing.
Paid TikTok Advertising
Introduce a dedicated paid TikTok advertising budget to amplify top-performing organic content. This ensures our strongest videos reach targeted local audiences at scale, driving awareness, profile visits, and follower growth. Paid amplification will also support key seasonal campaigns, events, and retailer promotions, allowing us to translate digital engagement into tangible commercial outcomes.
Zen Zone/ Community Space
UNIT 15
We propose transforming a vacant unit within Harpur Centre into a flexible Zen Zone and Community Space, a calm, inclusive environment that can be hired by local instructors, brands, and community groups to host a varied programme of activity. Uses could include yoga and wellbeing classes, beauty and skincare talks, product demonstrations, workshops, and small-scale community events.
The unit would be designed with a neutral, calming aesthetic to ensure maximum flexibility and longevity, allowing the space to adapt easily to different uses and partners. When not programmed, the space can operate as a quiet room, providing a safe, supportive environment for shoppers with sensory needs.
Rationale & Strategic Value
Shopping centres are increasingly expected to offer more than retail alone. Creating an experiential, community-led space enables Harpur Centre to evolve into a destination that supports wellbeing, learning, and social connection. This approach enhances relevance with modern consumers, strengthens emotional connection, and clearly differentiates Harpur Centre from competing retail destinations.
Key Benefits
Increased Footfall & Dwell Time
A programmed calendar of classes and events will encourage repeat visits from both new and existing audiences, increasing dwell time and supporting additional spend across food, beverage, and retail before and after sessions.
Engagement with New & Younger Audiences
Wellness, beauty, and lifestyle experiences strongly resonate with younger demographics and health-conscious consumers audiences that traditional retail alone may struggle to fully capture.
Stronger Community Positioning
A dedicated community space reinforces Harpur Centre’s role as the heart of the local community, supporting independent instructors, small businesses, and community groups while building trust, loyalty, and positive sentiment.
Content & Marketing Opportunities
The Zen Zone provides a consistent source of high-quality, authentic content for social media, PR, and influencer activity. Regular programming supports platforms such as TikTok and Instagram with minimal additional cost, helping drive awareness and engagement.
Retailer Collaboration & Upselling
Beauty, health, fitness, and lifestyle retailers can utilise the space for demonstrations, talks, and launches— strengthening retailer relationships, supporting sales, and creating valuable cross-promotional opportunities.
Flexible Revenue Stream
The space can be offered on a hire basis, helping to offset operational costs while testing demand and informing longer-term placemaking or leasing strategies.
Quiet Room
When not in use by local community groups, the space can operate as a dedicated quiet room, offering a calm and supportive environment for shoppers with sensory sensitivities or anxiety. This facility would provide a safe place to pause, reset, and feel comfortable, helping to make the centre more accessible to everyone. By offering this support, Harpur Centre encourages more people to visit with confidence, knowing there is a welcoming space available should they feel overwhelmed in a busy public setting.
Why This Matters Now
As consumer behaviour continues to shift towards experiences, wellbeing, and meaningful connection, introducing a Zen Zone positions Harpur Centre as progressive, people-focused, and future-ready. It supports wider marketing and commercial objectives by driving engagement, enhancing perception, and strengthening the centre’s role at the heart of the Bedford community.
everybody belongs 2026 INCLUSIVE PLACEMAKING CAMPAIGN
In 2026, we intend to roll out a year-long “Everybody Belongs” campaign at Harpur Centre, a bold, values-led programme designed to position the centre as one of the UK’s most inclusive and community-focused retail destinations.
This campaign will act as a unifying “big idea”, bringing together accessibility, wellbeing, community engagement, and customer experience in a way that is authentic, measurable, and highly visible, both locally and to national industry award bodies.
While core elements of Everybody Belongs will sit within the 2026 marketing strategy, the scale and ambition of the campaign, combined with 2026 being a River Festival year—means we will require additional budget to ensure meaningful delivery and amplification. Without this, the campaign risks being diluted rather than truly transformative.
We propose introducing Sensory Backpacks at Harpur Centre to support shoppers with sensory needs, including individuals with autism, ADHD, anxiety, and sensory processing sensitivities. The backpacks would be carried by trained members of the security and cleaning teams and made available to any shopper who may benefit from additional sensory support during their visit. Each backpack would include carefully selected items such as fidget toys, noise-cancelling ear defenders, and calming sensory tools, helping to reduce sensory overload and create a more comfortable shopping experience.
This visible, practical initiative sends a clear message: inclusivity at Harpur Centre is not symbolic, it is actively delivered on the ground.
We will develop a physical and digital Inclusive Map, hosted on the centre website and promoted across social channels, designed to help visitors plan their trip with confidence. The map will highlight:
• Quiet routes and calm zones
• Seating areas, accessible toilets, and lifts
• Step-free access points
• Recommended quieter times to visit
By addressing the often hidden barriers to visiting a shopping centre, the Inclusive Map empowers neurodivergent visitors, disabled shoppers, families, and carers, removing uncertainty and anxiety before they arrive.
Key Benefits
Improved Customer Experience
Sensory tools and clear information reduce stress and anxiety, enabling shoppers to remain in the centre for longer and enjoy a more positive, relaxed visit.
Inclusive & Family-Friendly Positioning
These initiatives directly support neurodivergent individuals and families, reinforcing Harpur Centre as a genuinely welcoming, compassionate, and inclusive destination.
Positive Brand Perception & Loyalty
Visible inclusivity builds trust, emotional connection, and long-term loyalty, strengthening Harpur Centre’s reputation as a centre that truly puts people first.
PR & Community Engagement Opportunities
The campaign provides powerful storytelling for PR, social media, stakeholder communications, and award submissions, while opening doors to partnerships with schools, charities, and local support organisations.
Why This Matters
Introducing Sensory Backpacks and the Inclusive Map under the Everybody Belongs banner demonstrates a proactive, thoughtful approach to accessibility and community care. It moves Harpur Centre beyond compliance and into leadership, ensuring all shoppers feel welcome, supported, and valued.
At a time when consumer expectations are shifting towards empathy, inclusivity, and experience-led destinations, this campaign positions Harpur Centre as progressive, people-focused, and future-ready, while creating a standout narrative that will resonate strongly with industry award judges.
Essential Investment in Social Media
Additional Investment Rationale
Additional investment in social media boosting will enable Harpur Centre to significantly expand reach, grow engaged local audiences, and strengthen awareness of the centre as a destination.
Boosting both social media pages and selected posts allows us to balance long-term platform growth with short-term campaign amplification, ensuring social media activity consistently supports footfall, engagement, and brand visibility.
Boosting Social Media Pages
Allocating budget to boost Harpur Centre’s social media pages will support sustained follower growth, increased brand awareness, and consistent visibility, particularly on platforms where the pages are still developing.
Page boosting helps establish a stronger presence within local feeds, ensuring Harpur Centre remains front of mind for key audiences. This approach is especially effective for reaching demographics who primarily use social platforms to discover local events, offers, and activities, supporting the long-term growth of a loyal and engaged audience base.
Boosting Social Media Posts
Alongside page boosting, budget will be used to amplify selected posts that best communicate Harpur Centre’s key messages, including:
- Events and experiential activity
- Family-friendly programming
- Retailer highlights and promotions
- Competitions and giveaways
- Seasonal and cultural campaigns
Event, Campaign & Competition Amplification
Targeted boosting of event and campaign content will increase awareness, engagement, and participation, encouraging shoppers to visit the centre to take part. Competition content, in particular, supports user-generated content and social sharing, extending reach beyond Harpur Centre’s owned channels and driving
Support for Footfall & Awareness
Increased reach and frequency strengthen awareness of events, promotions, and retailers —supporting real-world visits and spend.
Expected Outcomes
Increased page followers and sustained audience growth
Higher reach and frequency across local target audiences
Greater awareness of events, promotions, and retailer campaigns
Page boosting drives long-term follower growth and visibility, while post boosting increases engagement with priority content.
Amplifying high-performing posts ensures maximum return from existing creative assets.
Improved engagement rates across social platforms
Consistent paid support helps Harpur Centre remain visible and competitive against other retail destinations with strong digital activity.
Essential Investment in Social Media
CASE STUDY BENTALL CENTRE
The below shows the results from a one month period of additional boosting budget:
pop-up shop
We propose the creation of a fully fitted pop-up retail unit within a vacant space at Harpur Centre. The unit would be designed with a fixed counter, shelving, and a central display table, allowing short-term retailers to trade with minimal setup requirements. Retailers would simply bring their products, enabling quick changeovers between occupiers.
This flexible format allows the centre to host a rotating mix of brands, makers, and seasonal traders, creating a constant sense of freshness and discovery for shoppers. Regular retailer changeovers generate excitement, encourage repeat visits, and provide new reasons for customers to return to the centre.
The pop-up unit also offers a low-risk entry point for independent and emerging retailers, supporting local business while activating vacant space. From a commercial perspective, it creates an agile income stream and enhances the overall vibrancy and relevance of the centre.
We place a number of operators into both mall spaces and shop units throughout the UK.
pop-up shop
Popular category types for units include;
·American Sweets
·Animal grooming / specialist pet products
·Cake / ice cream
·Wellness / beauty
·Nostalgia / retro items
Craft operators – multiple operators sharing a space such as those who work with Bedford Craft Market - Love Bedford currently (a dedicated pop up shop could be created for craft operators.)
Bedford has produced many successful entrepreneurs.
These local entrepreneurs have a strong understanding of the Bedford market and are actively exploring regional franchise opportunities. Closely connected to the local community, they are well placed to identify gaps in the current retail offer, emerging trends, and products that align directly with the needs and preferences of Bedford shoppers.
This pop up strategy enables Harpur Centre to introduce relevant, demand led concepts in a flexible, low risk way, keeping the retail mix fresh while supporting both local enterprise and regionally proven brands that resonate with the local audience.
win the unit
We propose launching a high-impact campaign to activate a vacant unit by offering a small business the opportunity to win a shop unit for a fixed trial period (e.g. three months or up to one year).
The vacant unit would be fully vinyl-wrapped with bold “Win This Unit” messaging to generate curiosity and footfall, supported by a dedicated online application form hosted on the centre’s website. Interested businesses would be invited to submit a short business plan outlining their concept and how they would trade within the centre.
The aim of the campaign is to provide an emerging or independent retailer with a low-risk opportunity to test their concept in a live shopping centre environment. In return, the centre benefits from activating vacant space, introducing new retail concepts, and identifying businesses with strong potential to convert into long-term tenants following the free period. The campaign would be promoted through a multi-channel approach, including social media, local press advertising, and the centre’s website, ensuring strong visibility and engagement within the local business community.
All applications would be reviewed through a structured selection process, including shortlisting and interviews, to identify the concept that best fits the centre’s tenant mix and demonstrates the greatest potential for long-term success and lease conversion.
highstreet positive & chamber of commerce
We recommend becoming a member of High Street Positive, which provides a unique networking platform as well as a source of inspiration for inovative techniques to invigorate vacant units. Benefits of membership include:
Connect with a Passionate Community Network with like-minded people from all across the high street ecosystem – from councils, BIDs and landlords to retailers, hospitality providers, services, community initiatives, grass roots changemakers and anyone involved in the high street.
Be inspired by What’s Possible
Discover real world case studies and creative ideas that are revitalising high streets, sparking new opportunities, and making town centres vibrant and resilient.
Shifting the Narrative
Stay informed with news and data on why shifting the narrative matters. Help champion the positive stories that inspire investment, footfall and stronger communities.
Strengthening Harpur through strategic rebranding
In the current retail landscape, a refreshed and consistent brand presence is not optional, it is essential to maintaining relevance, footfall, and commercial performance. To address changing customer expectations and evolving market conditions, a comprehensive rebrand of the centre’s physical and digital assets is required to reset perception and re-energise engagement.
This rebrand will deliver a cohesive, contemporary visual identity applied consistently across all customer-facing touchpoints. Physically, this includes centre signage, wayfinding, window vinyls, hoardings, event branding, and on-site communications, ensuring the environment feels modern, welcoming, and actively managed. Digitally, the refreshed look and tone will be reflected across the website, social media channels, email communications, and digital advertising, creating a unified and recognisable presence wherever the centre is encountered.
From a commercial perspective, Chamber membership supports:
Increased visibility and advocacy among local businesses
Stronger tenant and occupier relationships
Opportunities to attract local and regional brands
Enhanced credibility with councils, investors, and stakeholders
Collectively, membership of both networks strengthens the centre’s strategic positioning, supports occupancy and footfall growth, and reinforces its role as a commercially successful and community-focused destination.
ARTWORK REFRESH
STRENGTHENING HARPUR THROUGH STRATEGIC REBRANDING
In the current retail landscape, a refreshed and consistent brand presence is not optional, it is essential to maintaining relevance, footfall, and commercial performance. To address changing customer expectations and evolving market conditions, a comprehensive rebrand of the centre’s physical and digital assets is required to reset perception and re-energise engagement.
This rebrand will deliver a cohesive, contemporary visual identity applied consistently across all customer-facing touchpoints. Physically, this includes centre signage, wayfinding, window vinyls, hoardings, event branding, and on-site communications, ensuring the environment feels modern, welcoming, and actively managed.
Digitally, the refreshed look and tone will be reflected across the website, social media channels, email communications, and digital advertising, creating a unified and recognisable presence wherever the centre is encountered.
This design aims to portray the Harpur Centre as a vibrant and uplifting space, utilising color, shape, and imagery to convey movement and energy. Layered geometric forms add depth and rhythm, while bold blues and greens suggest freshness and modern city life. Warmer hues like pinks and oranges introduce contrast and warmth, enhancing expressiveness. Clean lines guide the viewer through the design, making it structured yet fluid. The smiling shopper serves as a focal point, symbolizing enjoyment and confidence, reinforcing the Harpur Centre as a place for inspiration and connection.
lettings vinyls
We propose refreshing all vacant units with high-impact, vibrant vinyl installations designed to both showcase the available spaces and significantly enhance the overall look and feel of the mall. Rather than presenting vacant units as inactive or underutilised, these vinyls will transform them into visually engaging assets that contribute positively to the customer experience.
The vinyl designs will be bold, contemporary, and aligned with the centre’s brand identity, helping to create a more cohesive and energised mall environment. Content can include aspirational lifestyle imagery, brand-led messaging, community storytelling, or teaser-style graphics that highlight future opportunities and potential uses for the space.
From a commercial perspective, this approach: Improves first impressions and reduces the visual impact of voids, supporting footfall and dwell time Increases the perceived value of vacant units, making them more attractive to prospective occupiers Allows leasing messages to be subtly integrated, turning empty units into passive marketing tools Supports PR and social media content by creating a more “shareable” environment
In addition, vinyls can be rotated or refreshed seasonally, allowing the centre to respond to campaigns, events, or leasing priorities without long lead times or significant cost. This flexibility ensures the mall remains visually dynamic while maintaining control over messaging. Overall, this initiative reframes vacancy as an opportunity rather than a challenge, reinforcing a positive, well-managed retail environment and supporting both leasing performance and customer perception.
local club sponsorship
We propose a social media–driven competition inviting the local community to vote for a grassroots sports team to receive centre sponsorship. This approach is designed to maximise digital engagement, reach, and data-led insights, while positioning the centre as an active supporter of the local area.
The selected team will display the centre’s logo on their official kits, delivering ongoing, high-frequency brand exposure across match days, training sessions, league fixtures, and shared content on social and local media channels.
In addition, we will partner with the club throughout the year to deliver scheduled in-centre activations that drive footfall and dwell time. These activations may include skills workshops, appearances, and participation in centre-led community events aligned with the Everybody Belongs campaign.
This initiative delivers a clear return on investment by combining sustained brand visibility, increased social engagement, and incremental footfall, while strengthening the centre’s commercial and reputational value within the local community.
*This cost is estimated, an exact cost will be given upon inspection of the unit. The cost can also be offset in part from income derived from renting the unit to community groups.