Go behind the entries and get to know the people, projects and organisations shortlisted for The Revo’s 2026. Discover their stories, achievements and the work making an impact across our industry.
ORCHARD SHOPPING CENTRE, TAUNTON – FASHION FAVOURITES
Category
Best Marketing Campaign of the Year – Shoestring
Why did you want to enter The Revo’s?
Having achieved local community success with the idea to host a fashion show in collaboration with our local college, then discovering such positive support and feedback from everyone involved and attending, entering the Revo Awards enabled us to benchmark and showcase our ‘shoestring style and storytelling’ marketing project within the retail industry sector.
What makes your entry standout?
We feel that the collaborative approach in organising the Fashion Show, the amazing embodying support of the centre’s tenants, local stakeholders, and general public, but crucially the staff and students from Taunton College who demonstrated creativity and flair to captivate our audiences, makes this entry stand out. It was multi-generational, provided fantastic work experience for teenagers across several disciplines, allowed brands to showcase their new autumn fashion lines, and two local CIC companies to exhibit live arts and dance. The fact that it was achieved on a shoestring budget of less than £2k demonstrates the determination and belief from a group of committed local people.
How do you envision the future of your industry, and how do you hope to contribute to it?
The shape of retail is changing and, with Orchard Shopping Centre being in the heart of a market town, we need to seize the opportunity to become the community and cultural hub. Working with the local college, stakeholders, and our diverse mix of tenants, we feel that building an event, arts, and creative presence in our centre ‘space’ offers incentives to visit and dwell longer. It provides a meeting point for residents and visitors to Taunton and a facility for students, artists, and partners to promote their skills.
What one word best summarises your entry?
Collaborative!
BEES, BLOOMS AND BEYOND
Category
Best Marketing Campaign of the Year – Shoestring
Why did you want to enter The Revo’s?
Entering the Revo Awards was an opportunity to celebrate the success of Bees, Blooms & Beyond and demonstrate how existing environmental and wellbeing initiatives can be transformed into meaningful experiences for the wider community.
The team wanted to showcase the centre’s commitment to sustainability while recognising the collective creativity, dedication and enthusiasm that made the campaign possible.
Above all, the entry was an opportunity to inspire other destinations to recognise the potential of their existing spaces, resources and people to create lasting community impact.
What makes your entry standout?
What makes Bees, Blooms & Beyond stand out is its authenticity and the collaborative approach behind its delivery. Built around the centre’s existing environmental initiatives, including its rooftop beehives, staff wellbeing garden and resident bunnies, Ginge and Smudge, the campaign brought sustainability to life through engaging and educational experiences.
The entire campaign was made possible through the collective efforts of the centre team, who staged and staffed the event while delivering the educational content and interactive activities themselves.
How do you envision the future of your industry, and how do you hope to contribute to it?
As the retail landscape continues to change, the importance of creating genuine connections between destinations and their communities is greater than ever. Bees, Blooms & Beyond demonstrates how shopping centres can move beyond traditional retail to become spaces for education, sustainability, wellbeing and community engagement.
The campaign also highlights the value of investing in people and encouraging collaboration across all areas of centre operations, empowering teams to contribute their skills and ideas.
Looking ahead, the team hopes to inspire more destinations to embrace this people-led approach, creating authentic experiences that benefit both their communities and the environment.
What one word best summarises your entry?
Buzzing.
REIMAGINING SANTA’S GROTTO FOR SEND FAMILIES
Category
Best Community Initiative
Why did you want to enter The Revo’s?
We wanted to enter the REVOs as a celebration of our successful community initiative, which was so clearly needed and hugely appreciated by the families it supported.
We are incredibly proud of our SEND Santa’s Grotto and the difference it made, and we wanted not only to celebrate its success, but also to share the initiative with others and inspire more destinations to consider how they can create inclusive experiences for families with SEND.
The REVOs gave us the perfect platform to celebrate what we had achieved, gain recognition for the initiative and help raise awareness of the importance of making experiences accessible and enjoyable for everyone.
What makes your entry standout?
We believe our entry stands out not only because of its success, but because of the significant impact it achieved for our community on a relatively small budget.
Our SEND Santa’s Grotto demonstrates that you don’t need a huge budget to make a meaningful difference. With a strong idea, creativity, a passion for inclusion and the determination to make it happen, we created an experience that was genuinely needed and hugely appreciated by the families it supported.
It’s proof that sometimes the most impactful initiatives aren’t about how much you spend, but about understanding your community, recognising a need and finding a creative way to meet it.
How do you envision the future of your industry, and how do you hope to contribute to it?
We believe the future of the retail and leisure industry lies in creating destinations that offer more than just shopping. Experiences, community engagement and inclusivity will become increasingly important in encouraging people to visit, return and feel a genuine connection with a place.
We hope to contribute to this future by continuing to develop creative, accessible and community-focused initiatives that make a real difference. Our SEND Santa’s Grotto is a great example of how understanding your audience, identifying a need and thinking differently can create something truly meaningful, without requiring a huge budget.
We want to continue challenging perceptions, sharing ideas and inspiring other destinations to think about how they can better serve their communities. Ultimately, we believe successful destinations are those that make everyone feel welcome, valued and included, and we want to play our part in making that the future of our industry.
What one word best summarises your entry?
Inclusive.
TWO RIVERS: TURNING THE PAGE FOR STAINES
Category
Best Community Initiative
Why did you want to enter The Revo’s?
We are incredibly proud of the Book Booth initiative and the positive impact it has had on our local community, helping to promote literacy and encourage a love of reading within Staines town centre. We entered the REVOS because we believe this project demonstrates how a simple, accessible and community-focused idea can make a meaningful difference. It is also a campaign that can be easily replicated by other destinations, creating opportunities to engage local communities in a similar way. By sharing our project on a national stage, we hope to inspire other destinations to adopt similar initiatives and demonstrate the positive role that retail destinations can play in supporting their communities.
What makes your entry standout?
Our entry stands out because it responds directly to a local need and delivers a consistent message of promoting literacy and reading through several meaningful initiatives. From supporting a local school with books and resources to incorporating outdoor theatre and bringing a community library into our shopping centre, we have created multiple opportunities to make reading more accessible and engaging for the people of Staines.
The Book Booth has also helped foster a genuine sense of community spirit and togetherness. Its continued success relies on the goodwill, generosity and participation of local people, making it a truly community-led initiative. The fact that the Book Booth is self-sustaining and self-managed by the community demonstrates the strength of local engagement and the lasting impact that a simple idea can have when people come together behind a shared purpose.
How do you envision the future of your industry, and how do you hope to contribute to it?
This is a very big question for a small form. From a marketing perspective, we believe the future of our industry lies in shopping centres becoming more than places to shop, but valued third spaces where communities can connect, feel a sense of belonging and access meaningful experiences. As destinations, we have a responsibility to create destinations that respond to the needs of the communities they serve. Through initiatives like the Book Booth, we hope to demonstrate how simple, purpose-led campaigns can bring people together, create lasting social value and strengthen the role of shopping centres at the heart of their communities.
What one word best summarises your entry?
Togetherness.
A CENTRE THAT BELONGS TO LUTON
Category
Best Community Initiative
Why did you want to enter The Revo’s?
We entered The Revo’s because they celebrate the very best examples of how places are evolving to create value beyond their traditional role. Frasers Plus Luton has worked hard to demonstrate that a shopping centre can be more than a retail destination; it can be a catalyst for social, cultural and environmental impact.
The Community Star programme represents a long-term commitment to our town, our partners and our visitors. Being shortlisted provides an opportunity to share a model that has delivered measurable benefits to the community while supporting the wider success of the centre, and to showcase the positive role our industry can play in people’s everyday lives.
What makes your entry standout?
What sets our entry apart is that community impact is not a standalone initiative. It is embedded into the way the centre operates.
Rather than simply focusing on fundraising, we asked how every asset within the centre could be used for community benefit. Space, marketing channels, footfall, partnerships, staff expertise and even our rooftop became tools for positive change.
The Community Star framework brings together seven strategic priorities under one measurable programme, creating accountability and long-term impact. The results include £37,582 raised for good causes, £124,300 of in-kind support, 489 volunteering hours, support for 29 organisations, significant environmental improvements and cultural programming that celebrated the diversity of Luton while driving footfall and engagement.
Most importantly, this is not a series of isolated campaigns. It is a sustainable model that puts community at the heart of placemaking.
How do you envision the future of your industry, and how do you hope to contribute to it?
The future of the retail and placemaking industry lies in creating destinations that are indispensable to their communities. Civic responsibility is rising, with more focus on people and places than on commercial returns alone.
People increasingly expect places to offer experiences, opportunities, support and social connection alongside retail. Successful destinations will be those that create genuine community value while remaining commercially relevant. We hope to contribute by continuing to demonstrate how social impact and commercial success can work hand in hand. Through programmes such as our Community Star, we are helping redefine what a shopping centre can be: a platform for local charities, culture, health, education, sustainability and community wellbeing.
Our ambition is not only to make a difference in Luton, but also to provide an example that can inspire and be adapted by destinations across the industry.
What one word best summarises your entry?
Catalyst – unlocking the value of the centre’s assets for positive change.
MILL GATE LITTLE LEGENDS
Category
Best Marketing Campaign of the Year – Shoestring.
Why did you want to enter The Revo’s?
We wanted to showcase what can be achieved with a little creativity, a strong community partnership and a small budget. Our Little Legends campaign is something we are incredibly proud of, bringing together Mill Gate, Bury FC Juniors and the local community in a way that felt authentic and engaging. The Revos offered the perfect opportunity to celebrate the hard work behind the campaign and demonstrate that impactful marketing doesn’t always need a big budget.
What makes your entry standout?
Little Legends was about so much more than football-themed marketing. It was a celebration of local talent, a champion for grassroots football, and a way to put our community at the heart of a major sporting moment.
By bringing people together through creativity and collaboration, we showed how a big moment could make a real local impact, delivering fantastic results without the need for a huge budget.
How do you envision the future of your industry, and how do you hope to contribute to it?
We believe the future of shopping centre marketing is about creating genuine connections with local communities. Shopping centres are so much more than places to shop; they’re places where people come together, make memories and feel part of something.
We want to continue developing creative, inclusive campaigns that celebrate local people, support community organisations and give visitors more reasons to engage with their shopping centres. Little Legends is a great example of how we can achieve this, and we’re excited to keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, whatever the budget.
What one word best summarises your entry?
Community.
FESTIVAL PLACE: VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR
Category
Best Marketing Campaign of the Year – Large.
Why did you want to enter The Revo’s?
We entered because we believe Festival Place has demonstrated what modern shopping centre marketing should look like. We challenged the traditional approach, put video at the heart of our entire marketing strategy and proved that creativity can deliver measurable commercial results.
What makes your entry standout?
We didn’t just make more videos. We fundamentally changed how we approached marketing. Every campaign had to work twice: once at Festival Place and once on somebody’s phone.
By combining professionally produced, entertaining hero films with authentic daily organic content, we turned a shopping centre into a source of entertainment in its own right. We stopped making adverts people had to watch and started making content people wanted to watch.
How do you envision the future of your industry, and how do you hope to contribute to it?
The future of destination marketing isn’t simply about telling people where to shop. It’s about giving them a reason to care, engage, share and ultimately visit.
Shopping centres need to think more like entertainment brands and less like traditional advertisers. That means embracing creativity, humour, storytelling and authentic content that connects with audiences beyond the physical destination.
At Festival Place, we’ve demonstrated that a video-first approach can deliver both cultural relevance and commercial impact. We want to continue challenging conventions, pushing creative boundaries and helping redefine how shopping centres communicate with the communities they serve.
What one word best summarises your entry?
DISRUPTION.
CHANTRY PLACE – LAUNCHPAD
Category
Best Marketing Campaign of the Year – Medium.
Why did you want to enter The Revo’s?
Launchpad was a distinctive initiative among shopping centres. It gave a local independent business the chance to move from online to a physical store, without the overheads that usually put that step out of reach. The response was huge: 25 local businesses applied, and many told us they had never considered a physical store because of the cost.
Our campaign was built to inspire small, local businesses to take that leap, and it did. We’d love other centres to be inspired to run something similar, and the REVO Purple Apple Awards are the ideal place to share what we’ve learned with like-minded people and to be recognised alongside the best in retail destination marketing.
What makes your entry standout?
Launchpad had a tight timescale, so we developed the creative identity and a full set of assets that worked hard across social media and in-centre, delivering them in a matter of weeks.
The messaging was the real challenge. We needed to attract businesses that were young and still mostly online, but established enough to fit out, stock, staff and run a store in a busy shopping centre. Getting that balance right brought in a high calibre of applicants.
The results prove it worked. One competition brought two new independent tenants into the centre: the winning brand now trades from the Launchpad unit, and the runner-up took another unit as a result of the initiative. Launchpad succeeded in two ways, championing local independents and delivering commercially by filling vacant space and welcoming new tenants.
How do you envision the future of your industry, and how do you hope to contribute to it?
Shopping centres of the future will need to be community hubs as much as retail destinations, offering experiences, services and opportunities that cannot be replicated online.
We want to play our part by creating pathways for local businesses to grow, testing innovative concepts such as Launchpad, and ensuring Chantry Place remains a place where local enterprise, community engagement and commercial success go hand in hand. This is how we believe retail destinations can remain relevant, vibrant and resilient for generations to come.
What one word best summarises your entry?
Pioneering.
TRAFFORD CENTRE, ESCAPE ORDINARY
Category
Best Marketing Campaign of the Year – Large.
Why did you want to enter The Revo’s?
We chose the Revos because, for me, it’s recognition from our own industry. There are loads of marketing awards we could enter, but the Revos understand retail, leisure, placemaking and the challenges of marketing a destination like Trafford Centre.
Escape Ordinary was really about showing that we’re so much more than somewhere to shop, and that’s why this category felt like such a good fit. It was an opportunity to put the campaign in front of people who understand our world and see how it stacks up against the best in the industry.
What makes your entry standout?
For me, it stands out because it took everything that makes Trafford Centre what it is and put it under one really simple idea, Escape Ordinary. We weren’t just talking about shopping, we were bringing retail, dining, leisure and experiences together and showing why Trafford Centre is a destination in its own right.
But importantly, it wasn’t creative for creative’s sake. We had the results and ROI behind it too. So I think it’s that combination of a really strong idea, something that feels completely true to Trafford Centre, and the evidence that it actually worked.
How do you envision the future of your industry, and how do you hope to contribute to it?
I think the future of our industry is about creating destinations people actively choose to spend their time in. Retail will always sit at the heart of that, but increasingly it’s the combination of shopping, food, leisure, entertainment and experiences that gives people a reason to visit.
I’d love to play a part in pushing what destination marketing can be, being brave creatively, trying new things and making sure we’re constantly listening to what our customers actually want. Ultimately, I want Trafford Centre to keep evolving with our customers and hopefully help raise the bar for the wider industry along the way.
What one word best summarises your entry?
Extraordinary.
GEEK OUT GLOUCESTER
Category
Best Marketing Campaign of the Year – Large
Why did you want to enter The Revo’s?
We entered the Revo Purple Apple Awards because we believe in challenging the norm, disrupting the ordinary and proving what’s possible when you dare to do things differently. After being shortlisted last year for our Mr Moody campaign at The Fort Birmingham, we challenged ourselves with one question: How can we innovate further, stand out and deliver results our retailers and tenants have never seen before?
This year, we partnered with Gloucester’s King’s Quarter and Eastgate Shopping Centre with a mission to shake things up, change perceptions and breathe new life into the destination.
In a remarkably short space of time, we believe we’ve achieved just that. We’ve pushed creative boundaries, brought communities together, generated incredible engagement and demonstrated how the right approach to marketing can make a real difference to footfall, awareness and the businesses we support. Along with this we have changed a lot of local peoples belief in Gloucester. For us, it’s never just about views. It’s about turning attention into real world impact.
We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved together, and winning a Revo Purple Apple Award would be the icing on the cake. More importantly, it would be recognition of what can happen when people share a vision, embrace bold ideas and aren’t afraid to do things differently. We believe Revos represents that.
What makes your entry standout?
We didn’t just create an event. We gave a city something to get excited about, brought communities together and proved how powerful destination marketing can be when you understand what makes people tick. Everyone geeks out about something. Whether it’s gaming, cosplay, dinosaurs, comics, collectibles or something completely different, we all have passions that give us a sense of identity and belonging.
Our vision was to bring these interests together in one extraordinary event, celebrating individuality and creating something Gloucester had never experienced before. More importantly, we wanted to give a city that needed a morale boost something to feel genuinely proud of. What made Geek Out different was the behavioural science behind the campaign.
Rather than relying on traditional event advertising, we researched what motivates local people, applying insights from cognitive biases, social identity and the four masks people wear to understand what would make our audience stop scrolling, engage and, ultimately, visit. We created hyperlocal, instantly recognisable TikToks that spoke Gloucester’s language. Content that entertained, sparked conversations and made local people feel seen. And we did all this with just two to three months to market the event, starting with social platforms that had very little engagement and building a completely new TikTok account from scratch.
Nearly 900,000 views generated by Geek Out-related content across TikTok and Instagram, creating awareness well beyond Gloucester.
- Approximately 500,000 TikTok views, demonstrating how quickly we could reach audiences through a newly established platform.
- 2 million campaign views and 28,000 engagements** across our wider Gloucester marketing activity, showing the momentum created around the destination.
- 93% positive visitor feedback, with respondents rating their experience good or excellent.
- Footfall rising from approximately 500,000 to 1.1 million monthly visits during the early period of our destination strategy, demonstrating the wider transformation taking place. This reflects the combined destination activity, rather than Geek Out alone.
But perhaps our biggest achievement is the legacy we’ve created. Geek Out wasn’t a one-day success story. It became the catalyst for something much bigger.
The event demonstrated what could happen when the shopping centres, local communities, independent businesses, creators and city stakeholders worked towards a shared vision. We’ve already seen multiple legacy wins, from renewed community engagement and growing destination awareness to attracting creators from outside Gloucester who are now travelling into the city to film, document and share what’s happening. Most significantly, following Geek Out’s success, Gloucester City Council has instructed us to develop and market four major events a year instead of just one, recognising the positive impact this approach can have on the entire city.
That is perhaps our strongest endorsement. What started as a single event has helped establish a longer-term programme of activity designed to bring people into Gloucester, support local businesses, increase footfall and build community pride throughout the year. We’ve gone from promoting one event to helping shape a city-wide events strategy. And the impact extends well beyond our shopping centres. More visitors mean opportunities for surrounding retailers, hospitality businesses, independents and the wider city centre economy. Inclusivity was at the heart of everything.
Geek Out celebrated neurodiversity, welcomed communities with different interests and featured accessible gaming controllers so that people with different abilities could participate. We brought together people who might otherwise never have crossed paths, creating community cohesion that has never been seen before on this scale.
How do you envision the future of your industry, and how do you hope to contribute to it?
I’ve always been fascinated by one thing: why people do what they do. Why they’ll queue for hours for something they don’t necessarily need, travel hundreds of miles to meet someone they’ve only seen online, or feel emotionally connected to a place they’ve never even visited.
The more I’ve studied human behaviour, the more I’ve realised something: people don’t just buy products or visit places. They buy into stories, identities, communities and the way something makes them feel. And I believe that’s where the future of retail lies. I don’t believe physical retail is dying. In fact, I believe we’re on the edge of a revival. But the shopping centres that thrive will be the ones that stop thinking like traditional shopping centres.
Online shopping can offer convenience, choice and competitive prices. But it cannot fully replicate human connection, shared experiences, belonging or the excitement of being part of something. The future of retail isn’t about competing with the internet. It’s about using the internet to make people want to experience the real world. For too long, retail marketing has focused on the surface: demographics, discounts, products and promotions. But the real opportunity lies in understanding who people truly are beneath the masks they wear. Their motivations, insecurities, aspirations, values and what gives them a sense of identity and belonging.
Human behaviour hasn’t fundamentally changed. The platforms we use to communicate have. Shopping centres that understand this will stop simply advertising what they have and start connecting with *who their visitors are. But this requires a new approach to marketing that’s scalable, affordable and accessible to every shopping centre, regardless of budget. Gone are the days when you need a ten-person production crew and enormous advertising budgets to make an impact. Some of the most powerful storytelling can be created with a smartphone, a relatable character and a genuine understanding of human behaviour. My philosophy is simple: First seek to understand, then to be understood.
Through native storytelling, recognisable personalities, recurring characters and content that feels like entertainment rather than advertising, shopping centres have the opportunity to build relationships with people long before they ever physically visit.
Imagine a shopping centre where people know the staff by name, follow their stories, look forward to the next episode and feel emotionally invested in the destination. They’ve laughed with the characters, shared their experiences and become part of an online community. Then, when they visit the city, that shopping centre isn’t just somewhere to shop. It’s somewhere they feel they already know. Somewhere they want to experience for themselves. That’s when retail destinations become more than commercial spaces. They become part of the culture.
I believe the most successful shopping centres of the future won’t just compete for footfall, market share or top-of-mind awareness. They’ll become destinations people actively seek out, talk about and travel to visit. Almost like tourist attractions in their own right. And we’re already seeing glimpses of that future through our work with Mr Moody at The Fort Birmingham and Geek Out Gloucester, where storytelling, community and shared experiences have given people reasons to engage with destinations beyond shopping alone.
The role we want to play in that future. At Nourish Social, we want to partner with shopping centre management teams who have the courage to disrupt, innovate and lead rather than follow. Real innovation isn’t about copying competitors. It’s about understanding your community deeply enough to create something original that others can’t replicate. We don’t want to be just another content agency. We want to be the strategic guide that helps shopping centre teams become the heroes of their own story.
What one word best summarises your entry?
Transformation.