Chadstone

Truly great cities promise endless possibility. The choreography of chance and the infinite interplay between people and place mean that each visit, each day, each hour might deliver something new and unexpected.

In 2019, Vicinity defined a new vision for Chadstone – Australia’s largest shopping centre. The ambition was bold: to reposition Chadstone as a city, not a just a retail destination.

With 21.1 million annual visitors to Chadstone, compared with 12.9 million visitors to Melbourne, there’s a compelling case to be made this was a shift already well underway.

Our role was to codify this transition with a considered brand strategy, then develop a suite of visual and verbal tools to communicate it internally and externally. This was a process of many years work, more briefs than we can count and an email footprint whose wordcount could rival the library of Alexandria.

Now, the cumulative output of those years has manifested as a new era of Chadstone. One that sees the brand eclipse its ‘fashion capital’ moniker to become a dynamic destination, a place of chance encounters, evolving discovery and unfolding synchronicities.

More than that, though, is the fact that more people than ever are making their way to this emerging city. In the last quarter of FY2025, Chadstone’s visitation was up 36 percent compared with the same period in the prior year.

Beyond the shopping cart

To truly inhabit the role of a civic institution, Chadstone needed to add depth and dimension to its offering. Evolving beyond their ‘fashion capital’ identity to become a brand fit for the future. Internally, this transition was spearheaded by architect and design manager David Waldren and his team.

Central to the transformation were the addition of two new precincts, consciously designed to expand the destination’s offer and scope. First, with the launch of The Social Quarter, followed by The Market Pavilion in 2025, an indoor market featuring Melbourne’s best grocers and providores. These changes added depth and diversity to Chadstone, positioning it not just as a world-class retail destination but as a vibrant choice for dining, entertainment and fresh food.

For each of these initiatives, we defined a precinct strategy alongside naming, visual and verbal identities, phased launch campaigns and ongoing narrative content to attract new and diverse audiences to Chadstone, designed with intention and care to win over CBD-centric visitors who historically haven’t seen the centre as a destination relevant to their needs and desires. Throughout this activity, we were cognisant of the centre's larger strategic journey and they key role these offerings would play within the broader context of the Chadstone brand. 

Designing a new era for an icon

Working on a brand with such equity and recognition among the public poses a specific challenge. While the reasons for change on the client-side may be well established, the public audience isn’t privy to these conversations and can therefore experience any degree of change as an affront to their understanding of – and relationship with – a brand.

When it came to Chadstone’s wordmark, our approach favoured evolution rather than revolution. Born in a print-centric era when fashion houses and publications favoured high-contrast serifs (think 'Vogue' or Polo Ralph Lauren), it no longer fit Chadstone’s ever-expanding scope of experience. Similarly, new digital forms and formats required a flexibility and scalability absent from the existing wordmark.

Our design solution was respectful of the brand’s legacy that still solved the associated challenges. To that end, we created a wordmark and design system that could speak to a plurality of experiences, from fashion to place to hospitality. In short, a wordmark fit for a city.

The great reveal

With our assets aligned, it was time to share our vision with the world. We needed to craft a brand campaign that would transition us from the fashion capital to Australia’s leading lifestyle destination.

Informed by tourism and city-based initiatives, our campaign championed unexpected narratives, capturing a place that promised possibility. The result needed to talk to a wide swathe of the population, with consideration of their differing drivers and behaviours, while prioritising poise and personality.

This campaign marked a defining moment in Chadstone’s history, a clear demarcation between yesterday’s brand – which the centre had outgrown – and the Chadstone of the future, clear-eyed, multidimensional and forever evolving.

Embedding the change within

While it was important to articulate this shift externally, we recognised a pressing need to implement these changes internally as well. After all, it was those at Chadstone on the frontline – the leasing agents, customer service staff and marketing team – who were having conversations (and shaping perceptions) about Chadstone day in and day out.

To this end, we developed a series of robust visual and verbal brand tools for Chadstone’s internal team. Chief among these was a suite of design tools, as well as an extended brand voice documentation. Collectively, these resources helped to embed our new positioning within the organisation and give teams the skills and vocabulary to bring the new Chadstone to life when engaging prospective tenants, brands and collaborators. We also hosted an in-depth writing workshop for customer service, brand and marketing staff to ensure those who communicate on behalf of Chadstone daily had a clear understanding of how we describe the unique world we inhabit.

Simultaneously, from a strategy perspective, we created an updated precinct proposition and customer journey mapping designed to boost dwell time and benefit retailers with additional cross-trade opportunities and proximity to complementary or like-minded offers.

Building the Chadstone extended universe

Since the launch of the new brand, we’ve undertaken several seasonal campaigns – including over the past two Christmas periods. Nowhere is the strategic, tonal and visual shift better represented (and necessary) than in these critical calendar occasions.

The broadened strategic and creative focus has given us more tools at our disposal to tell deeper, richer stories. Those befitting a city – not a shopping a centre.