Hammerson rolls out strategic digital kids play with Play9 across its European portfolio

Play9’s relationship with Hammerson, one of the largest retail groups in the UK began in October 2015, initially in a three-month trial.

Off the back of the trails overwhelming success, Hammerson and Play9 have worked together to roll out interactive play zones throughout their UK portfolio. Play9 are now in 66% Hammerson Shopping Centres in the UK, as well as two additional centres in Europe.

The rollout has proven to be a huge success, Christiaan Lette our Managing Director says “The results have been outstanding, we capture anonymous real-time analytics through our iM platform and have overlapped this with sales data. We are seeing increased dwell time and sales as a direct result of an enhanced family experience”. That equates to 27 families playing every 10 minutes.

Since day one, there has been over 3 million total game plays, an average of 45,000 games per month. Data aside – our main aim is to put smiles on kids’ faces, enhancing the overall shopping experience for families and giving parents a few minutes to simply re-energize. “Our interactive play captures the imagination of a wide range of ages, from toddlers engaging with our sound and light tunnels, all the way to 9-year-olds climbing over mounds and engaging with our stunning library of unique hand-crafted games” says Christiaan.

Together with Hammerson, we are identifying key areas within the centre environment where families are crying out for enhanced experiences. One of these areas is within the Parent Rooms. Our play experts have carefully crafted calming designs, characters and content to be soothing for children, creating a breakaway haven within centres.

Paul Barthorpe, Product Innovation Project Manager at Hammerson says, “Play9 had a key role to play in making our family change rooms feel more comfortable, inviting and entertaining. The digital play was carefully curated to keep kids peacefully entertained while parents are busy changing or feeding their babies. Play9 created a theme for the game that continues in the soundscape and on all the decorative elements in the room, to create a unique and relaxing atmosphere that helps families reset their day. Play9 are a key partner in Hammerson’s commitment to providing innovative and entertaining facilities for families”.

Further still, Hammerson has invested in a series of exclusively tailored content, creating bespoke characters and themes inspired by local areas and over-layed with seasonal content such as Easter and Christmas. Hammerson Centres then share the ever-growing library to ensure fresh content across the board. Christiaan states “Content is produced in-house, and updated periodically, we have over 30 games in our library. This ensures content is always fresh and ties in with seasonal events. For international markets, we always trans-create content so it’s relevant”

The beauty of Play9 engines is the ability to transcribe Game Packs into other languages, for instance in Terrasses du Port, France. For the first month at Terrasses du Port, our analytics and data platform ‘iM’ recorded over 46,000 game plays.

Play9 reinvents traditional play through the creation of beautiful sculpture play. Products are made to be abstract, allowing for interpretation, and with it, they are brought to life in the different ways they are used. Sound, light and illumination change the form of the objects, making the whole space more enchanting.

Christiaan Lette – “One of the most exciting elements has been that Hammerson has committed to the play strategy to continuously enhance the space, this ensures new interactive play-along-the-way and other interactive experiences are being introduced so that the experiences continue to delight customers”.

Looking back at the two and half years of rollout, Play9 and Hammerson have worked closely to deliver engaging environments for the whole family. Play9 looks forward to what 2018 has in store. With our amazing team of experts, we are proud to be the leaders in creating the play spaces of tomorrow, today! And doing globally – 2018. Let’s Play!