VR Bengaluru – Snapshot Authentic

Virtuous Retail's pan-India portfolio of retail and community centers started with its first retail center in Bengaluru. A lifestyle destination with curated set of retailers, restaurants, PVR , hotel and coworking space , and armed with a unique offering they confidently opened the place next to the giant Phoenix mall Bengaluru.

The photography challenge was to build the differentiation clearly in the minds of the stakeholders

a) Consumers visiting the mall next door
b) The targeted catchment
c) The investors
d) The retail outlets/ partners

The preproduction was an elaborate exercise of shooting consumers in their natural environment, breaking down the offerings into a simple quadrant and tying it all up with a bespoke visual language.

It started with creating a prototype of the demography that visited VRB. The shoot resulted in developing the style for the images – Snapshot Authentic - as the audience was very sophisticated and would not fall for regular concept images with models. The images needed to be authentic and exuberate the energy of this new social hub for urban consumers.

Playful sophistication was the tagline. The images were carefully developed, each a story of actual people engaging with the environment for various offerings the place had to offer. The images would have to connect with the multiple stakeholders and at the same time tell the differential value proposition very evidently. When strung together the images would act as a collective building the image of a lifestyle destination with the singular visual language / style of playful sophistication.

Published across the Condenaste group of magazines, inflight magazines, newspapers and exhibitions, online and offline, the images also won several international awards for VRB. The success of the concept was marked by the largest single deal in the retail real estate sector in India - the Dutch pension fund asset manager APG Asset Management and Virtuous Retail , sponsored by leading emerging markets investment firm The Xander Group Inc. partnered to form a joint venture and APG invested 77% of the equity for a majority shareholding in the joint venture.