The Future of Workspaces: Flexibility, Retention, and Innovation with Lauren Zinkan

Hello and welcome to the creative viz podcast where we talk about topics in architecture, real estate and visual design. Today. I've got the pleasure of speaking with Lauren Zinkan she is the director of marketing and communications with Martin Selig real estate in Seattle, Washington. Welcome Lauren. Great to see you. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. I understand you are primarily operating in the office market and that is especially challenging these days. I'd love to hear your perspective. What are you seeing? And if you can tell us a little about any hopeful signs you might be seeing in the commercial office market these days. Definitely. It's no secret that the commercial market is moving a little bit slower than it used to. The general trends that we're seeing is an uptick in activity. But instead of having, the super large requirements where, tenants are looking for 80, 000 square feet. Instead, they're looking for, 20 or 30. We're also seeing, more flexibility in the spaces that they want. Instead of having a lot of, individual offices built out, except for, more traditional industries, like the legal industry we're seeing a lot of hot desks. We're seeing a lot of open floor plans amongst all of the buildings we're seeing this; amenities arms race where especially older buildings are trying to compete with the new class a building a bunch of amenities and are, trying to create this pull to get businesses in and offer, more competitive rates and offer, similar to the same amenities at, a lower cost because of, it being an older building.  Are you finding that tenants are, reducing their footprint. is that something that you're seeing on the ground? I would say, yeah, especially the super large tenants that, we're occupying, entire buildings or multiple floors. We're seeing across the board, just a reduction of space. We're seeing Amazon giving up buildings and changing where their offices are located. Another thing that we're seeing within the urban environment is that those spaces are being hit a little bit harder. Because when covid hit and everyone spread out to more of the suburbs we saw a lot of satellite campuses open to be closer to the employees. And I think that with the return to office mandates that are happening and, with people having to, start commuting again, we're seeing companies try to meet employees in the middle and say, our leases are up, or we're going to reduce our footprint, but we're going to come closer to you, or we'll offer more options where you can go. Interesting. So even if you're in the office, you might be working remote with other teams. Yeah. And I think that taking that approach of companies that have multiple locations, across the U. S. or across the world, they're saying, instead of having one office in Seattle, we'll have, one in Seattle and one in Bellevue and one in Tacoma and just dispersing a little bit more, but keeping the overall footprint. So, the overall footprint may not have changed all that drastically, but it is going into different places. Then just extrapolating from that. Do you think that some of the submarkets are overperforming? Are they actually benefiting from this trend?  There's definitely been some submarkets that have grown from this. I'm based in the Seattle area. So, I am most versed with that. But I know that Bellevue has been a hot topic and especially with COVID and, moving over to the East side a little bit more. We've seen a lot of companies at least consider that as an option. We're also seeing, a lot of growth in Tacoma.  Seattle is coming back pretty substantially. From Amazon requiring employees to come back in office. Also, just from the day-to-day foot traffic that I see downtown. We're definitely seeing a trend of people coming back to the city. The Tacomas, maybe Kirkland's of the world might be benefiting in the short term while the, center city markets are still recovering, Definitely. The 1 thing that noticed is that the city is still remaining as, the hub of where everything is. That's where all the headquarters are but we're seeing growth in, satellite offices more dispersed throughout the region. As a result of all this would you say that tenants looking for short term leases more than they might have a few years ago just to maintain flexibility. I would say that there's honestly, two camps that are happening right now. There are companies that have, decided what their real estate strategy is. They know what they want to do and they're confident signing, 10 to 15, maybe even 20-year leases. Then kind of in the other camp, we have companies that typically tend to be, smaller or more midsize companies Are waiting to see what everyone else does. And from my observation, what I've seen those companies do is they're more inclined to kind of extend their terms and they'll, extend their lease for, a year to five years because they want to see how the market shakes before they make any large decisions. Let's get back onto marketing. Love to hear just kind of your approach. Now I understand you're primarily office. Do you put together marketing packages for other building types, residential, mixed use anything else? Currently I do office and one mixed use building. In a previous role, I oversaw multifamily assets. So, I have a little bit of experience with both. I would say that they are, completely separate entities in terms of how they're run and, what you're looking for. I would say, speaking from the office side of things I think it, poses, the biggest opportunity for a marketer right now. But also, it's the biggest hurdle because there is so much on the market. It's really a question of, how do you stand out? How do you, call attention to yourself and also looking at the financials of how much are you willing to spend on a campaign to get back what you need? From, digital side of things, the major trend we're seeing is that a lot of companies are putting a lot of marketing dollars into their campaigns and they're buying, the highest tiered listings on, the MLS platforms. And if you can afford to that's great. On the flip side, if you're, trying to be. More efficient with you spend, how else do you approach that? I think that has kind of been where I've landed, to me, I can't justify spending that amount because, the conversion rates just aren't there. And so, what I pivoted to is taking a more retention-based strategy because if you think about it, the cost of, going and getting, a new lease and a new tenant, not only are you paying, for the marketing and the space planning and all of those things, but then you have, the cost of the build out. And it's a long time to really get that tenant in and start paying rent versus if we, turn inwards and say, how do we keep the people that are in our buildings, even if they want to, downsize, how do we keep them with us or within this space? It could be more cost effective just to work on the retention. Both in multifamily and in, commercial real estate in my opinion, I think tenant retention is, one of the highest indicators of, a good business strategy, but also from a financial performance standpoint, that's where priorities should lie. As a marketing professional, do you put together campaigns for existing tenants? As their Lisa starts a sunset, like, hey, you might be thinking about X, Y, Z. Here's why you should stay. So, when I joined, this wasn't a strategy that we had been using previously. So, I looked at, what does a tenant experience, what are all of our touch points when, they come in with us. And, from the move in to when their lease is up, however many years later that is, how many times do we get to interface with them? What materials are they getting? And what is that experience? It really came down to, there's a move in, there's a thanks for being here. We're excited to have you. And then, down the line it's, hey, do you still want to stay? In my mind, that has been successful and that's worked since you're working with companies versus, individual residents. You don't need as many touch points. But there's really a big opportunity there. I have brought in I call them; tenant retention events and we've used them to circle around our company values and try to, align both of our tenants and provide them something fun to do and build community, but also kind of show who we are as an organization. It's been really fun. We've been able to get, our sales team out there and interface with everyone. We've done anything from, holiday events to philanthropy and community service. We've done, local discounts for either vendors that we have within our portfolio or, neighborhood partners. Fun games. We've done, Surveys with raffles, anything that we can do to, interact, gain feedback, understand what we're doing well, what we can improve on and then really taking that information and saying, okay, well now how do we act on this? We know that there's an issue here. We know that we're doing really well here. How can we make that better? how can we fix something that we've identified is, a common weakness? Can see that feedback could be a real problem. On the commercial side, if you may not talk to them for years. And so, you may not really Have that many opportunities to hear from them directly. What are your concerns here? Like you said, what's working, what's not. Whereas, an apartment building, you might get that every year. You'd be released and stuff. You're going to hear it. Something's not working. You're going to hear about it right away. If you think about it, in an apartment building, you're your own representative, right? If you have, a leak or something's broken, then you're going to say something about it. In the commercial market, you have one contact. And sometimes, it's an office manager. Sometimes if it's a smaller business, it's the owner. What I have learned is creating the survey and sending it out to whoever is the representative that, gets the information from, the ownership group, but bringing those in person events and bringing, all of the employees out. It's amazing what you learn and what you find. Once you start talking to them. That's great. As a marketer, I'd love to hear some of your strategies for personalizing campaign. It sounds like, you're working small all the way up to the biggest what's your mindset when you go into a sales launch or leasing campaign? How do you do your research and tailor it, to the situation?  The general rule of all marketing is know your audience, know what they want to see, know what they're looking for know how they want to be communicated to and if there's a specific client in mind, there's a lot of research involved and it's, how do they present themselves? How do they communicate? What have they established their values are, where are they funneling their energy? And then we can take a look at that and create a tailored approach to it. Some fun projects that I have been a part of have been for. A social media client, we created the pitch deck to look like their social platform. They were interacting with it like they did their software. That was a really fun project. It was also really hard for me to get in the mind of, how do I design this? I'm sure they're going to find a million things that I messed up in here, but I hope it looks, 90 percent there that's a fun one. It's also about knowing, the people that you're working with. Sometimes it might not always be a pitch deck and sometimes it might be more of that relationship approach what does this person value and what are they interested in? As someone who's kind of all in on digital marketing, do you go into campaigns with notions of we're going to do X amount of social media, we're going to do website, other digital assets versus, we're going to Do events. We're going to invest in, face to face marketing, maybe print or physical investments that you might make. Do you go into campaigns with that in mind or does that come later after, of the research has happened? Would say that is More of how it starts and then the research fills in my approach of how I do it. When I'm initially setting, a campaign or deciding what we should be doing, it's, what are the business objectives and, what are the marketing objectives that I need to reach in order to support those. If we're trying to gain more exposure, maybe I'm going to put more emphasis on, our social platforms, or if we're trying to, generate more leads for our sales team, then I'm going to focus more on. The digital channels and more of, the MLS platform and broker relationships and things of that nature. I create a giant document basically that says, what does the company want to achieve? What do I need to achieve in order to help us get there and then break it down. It is a very large document, but basically at the end, it's a page called outputs. And it says what do I need to produce very boiled down anything from, we need 10 social posts a month on each channel. We need, one blog written about, one of our values or how we're interacting in the community. We need one positive PR piece, in a regional market. And then, maybe per year we want, one mentioned in a national outlet. And, go down there and say, these are all of the things that we need to achieve. Then just start chipping away at how and then the research comes into place. It can sometimes be really intangible. Obviously, there's getting the other party to sign on the line, but in other ways, how do you measure success? do you know if you've achieved success? Up to that point I'm primarily a data driven person.  Marketing without any data is just gambling. I always like to see that, the figures are aligning with, the strategy and checking in to make sure that we are growing, at an appropriate amount for the amount of effort and spend that's being put into something. Aside from that, big thing to me is, what is that impact? And what are you hearing and kind of listening to the chatter on the market?  What does the community, think of us and, what can we do to, build this relationship even more or, stand out from other groups? It's having an ear to the ground, having, connections and saying, behind closed doors, what are people saying regardless of if it's good or bad, it's always important to know because then you can change whatever you're doing or enhance it. That's great. As we wrap things up, any other thoughts you had on that. like to end on something hopeful. Any predictions, for 2024 any hotspots things that are going well these days. I would say overall predictions, in the headlines, the main tagline has been, quote, unquote, survive till 2025. I think that's when the market is predicted to stabilize and things will, return to their new normal. Normal.  The new normal is definitely the phrase that we should be using, but that's my own personal opinion. Overall, the market is definitely picking up not quite exponentially, but almost there in places that you'd have, only a couple tours. Now there's a ton.  Companies are finally starting to get the confidence. To return back to the market.  Return to work policies have stabilized for the most part where companies have either decided, you're hybrid, you're in all the time, or, you can be fully remote. And because of that, we're starting to see more curiosity going on. We're seeing a lot of, requests for flexibility in terms of, how much space can we take? What if we don't need that? Having, more open conversations of, what does this look like? There's a lot of people that are unsure because there's still, this push and pull between the employers and the employees because there's very different, wants and needs there. It's a very intricate dance of how do we, Get our employees in and make them happy. How do we, achieve what we want to and how do we, not create tension over it. The biggest thing right now is just, having an open line of communication. Being able to, have a big picture idea and be open to ideas or things that. Aren't traditional because with most of the office spaces that we're seeing, be built and open up today, they don't look anything like they used to, they're coffee bars lounges and living rooms. They're not, cubicles or offices. We were talking about the third space just a minute ago and, how employers, are feeling like that's a big draw for, their staff is to give them that space to socialize in ways that they may not have through the pandemic. Definitely. Remote workers are wanting somewhere to go, but they don't want to go to an office yet, that's definitely, a way to meet in the middle and say, okay, well, it's not, quote unquote, an office, but how about you, hang out where everyone happens to be employed by the same person and you get a free cup of coffee. I believe that that's going to be the winning strategy going forward in this market. So many insights today. Thank you so much, Lauren. Really appreciate you joining us today. Anything else you'd like to add? Any causes close to your heart that you'd like to share with us? I would say that for any woman that's interested in commercial real estate, there is a great organization called crew. They do a lot of great work, across the U S and it's been a great resource for me. I would encourage anyone who's interested to check it out. That's great. Thank you so much, Lauren. Really appreciate your joining us today and for our listeners, be sure to follow us to stay on top of all of the latest developments in architecture development and visual design. Till next time, I'll see you later.