Lauren Groves Lauren Groves

The Ambience Networking Lounge 2023

Well, it's done! For months, we at Stephen Spencer + Associates have been living and breathing AMBIENCE - be it Ambience Networking Lounge or Ambience Playbook.

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Lauren Groves Lauren Groves

Ambience Networking Lounge at M+H Show 2023

This year’s Museums + Heritage Show will introduce a newly designed networking area for attendees to meet with Sector Support Organisations and Networks. The space, named the ‘Ambience Networking Lounge’, has been created in partnership with collaborative consultancy Stephen Spencer + Associates. Its design is centered around the creation and importance of ambience, and will explore how each of the senses combine.

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Lauren Groves Lauren Groves

Demographic dividends - grasping the retail opportunities of healthy ageing

Stephen was delighted to contribute to an important and lively webinar by the International Longevity Centre - UK. With the potential annual spend by disabled people estimated at £80bn in the UK, the arguments for making shops and High Streets both accessible and appealing to older people are clearly commercial as well as moral.

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Lauren Groves Lauren Groves

Experience on Main Street

Experience UK, in partnership with the Department for International Trade, has just launched the 2022 edition of Experience on Main Street and we very pleased to contribute. Find us on page 84 where we examine why the future of retail is Ambience.

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Lauren Groves Lauren Groves

Why retail leaders should visit their store ahead of Christmas

Arriving at a new client visitor attraction early yesterday morning, and not seeing an obvious entry point to the management offices, I followed an employee into the cafe kitchen, where I met the cafe manager. Introducing myself, I noted that she seemed pleased to see me. "I don't normally see anyone down here", she explained…

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Lauren Groves Lauren Groves

A feast for the senses this Christmas

If you’re currently putting the finishing touches to your Christmas display thinking, “something is missing”, could it be that your sixth sense is kicking in?

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Lauren Groves Lauren Groves

Take action now for a resilient 2023

We may have a new Prime Minister, and a new Chancellor of the Exchequer (cue Brenda from Bristol: “ANOTHER one???”), but nevertheless it’s a fairly certain bet that 2023 is going to be a challenging year, for attractions, destinations, high streets and of course for consumers. So, assuming Christmas planning is “done”, how can we give our business the best possible start in the coming year?

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Lauren Groves Lauren Groves

Welcome to our two new Associates

SS+A is delighted to be adding two consultants with hands-on experience gained in such luminous environments as The Harry Potter Studio Tours and Merlin Entertainments.

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Lauren Groves Lauren Groves

The future of retail is ambience. Unveiling our new brand.

Your shop is your event space - an activation or extension of your brand experience. Every journey that a customer takes through your store, both on and offline, should immerse them in your values and heritage, and leave them wanting more.

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Lauren Groves Lauren Groves

Slava Ukraini! Heroiam slava!

In a personal piece, Associate Dean Ford (Creative Director of The Modern Agency) shares his own experience of how the war has affected his outlook on business and what we can do to help.

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Lauren Groves Lauren Groves

For tourism to recover sustainably, a fresh mindset is required

Whatever the government does, or doesn't do, for or to tourism over the next few months and years, it's absolutely possible for destinations and communities of businesses to take action, ideally in partnership with the existing local support infrastructure.

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Lauren Groves Lauren Groves

Don’t go BACK to business as usual, build FORWARD better

Join us in Theatre 3 where we’ll be hosting a fantastic array of the very best people from our industry.I always hang on Colin Shaw's words, and this article is a great rallying call for all businesses as we move "post-pandemic" into some sort of "normality". He heralds "the next wave of business change... Customer Science is the fusion of artificial intelligence (AI), customer data, and the concept of the behavioural sciences".

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Lauren Groves Lauren Groves

Platinum Jubilee Business Booster

Presenting a new workshop to help you and your organisation rapidly develop and launch innovative ways to use The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee to excite your customers and attract new ones.

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