Holiday Central

Mall promotions gain status with national marketers.

Promoting in shopping malls is hardly a new strategy for marketers. But the lengths to which brands are now engaging customers in many of the nation’s malls is new.

Look no further for an example than the Through Your Eyes tour Rochester, NY-based Eastman Kodak Co. ran in malls owned by General Growth Properties earlier this year. The 20-city tour trotted out then-promising boy band Youngstown for mini-concerts and autograph signings. Kodak used the effort to push its one-time-use products. Retail partner Sam Goody sold custom fan packs featuring Kodak Max Flash cameras, information on a photo contest, and a Youngstown keychain.

Despite the band’s failure to become the next N Sync, Kodak was well pleased. According to Eric Lent, marketing director for youth marketing and one-time-use cameras, the mall concerts drew between 1,000 and 3,000 attendees per show. Teen girls waited as much as four hours to receive signed photos from band members in an area that prominently displayed Kodak products. “For the first time, Kodak brand preference increased among teens,” says Lent.

While Kodak doesn’t have a mall effort planned for the 2000 holiday season, it will resurrect the strategy in 2001 by partnering with youth advocacy group SHINE to sponsor a series of speak-out sessions addressing teen concerns such as violence and drug abuse and hosted by popular musicians. Kodak is partnering with an as-yet-unnamed record label to provide talent for the series. “Mall marketing is one of the most viable promotional vehicles we have,” says Lent. “The average consumer is receiving 4,000 marketing messages per day. Traditional marketing doesn’t carry the weight it used to, but mall marketing can still provide an effective impact on the consumer.”

Beyond the Coupon The days of handing out samples or coupons from a card table in the food court aren’t entirely gone, but more frequently than not mall initiatives go much deeper than that, tying together property owners, retailers, and brands for integrated efforts to reel in mallrats. Look around the mall this holiday season and you’re sure to find some big-budget programs boasting multiple partners and players.

Visa is getting a national presence this month through a tie-in deal with Universal Studios, Universal City, CA. The Visa & The Grinch Give Back The Holidays sweeps will pay off holiday purchases (November PROMO) for 500 Visa customers after the first of the year. The program has a mall-specific component in which shoppers can try their luck at opening a locked “Humongous Gift Box,” a treasure chest filled with gifts. To qualify, shoppers must show a Visa receipt from an anchor tenant.

Elsewhere, General Mills has been hosting Honey Nut Cheerios Family Fun Days at Mall of America in Minneapolis – the Taj Mahal of the nation’s malls – while communications company Qwest hit the same venue with a music festival that runs through Dec. 24.

Glendale, CA-based Nestle is experimenting with a promotion in Cleveland that could roll out nationally to 250 malls next year. Shoppers who bring receipts from Nestle cookie dough purchases to four malls in the Cleveland area – Beechwood, Richmond Town, Great Lakes, and Summit Mall – receive $5 discounts on photos with Santa Claus. Mars Advertising, Southfield, MI, handles, with mall marketing specialist EventNet, Fort Lauderdale, FL, covering field execution.

Up Close and Personal EventNet classifies its mall executions as “Themed Events,” which include celebrity appearances and concerts, and “Mall Mass,” which are programs designed simply to generate traffic. “Mall Mass seems to be less appealing this year,” says EventNet founder Joel Benson. “Our clients would rather spend more money doing a better job on creating interactive programs than just handing out samples.”

In an age in which high-end marketing messages often cancel each other out, mall marketing offers direct and low-tech appeal. “We deliver ourselves as a medium, just like TV or radio,” says Benson. “The difference is we’re a live medium and we can see the immediate reaction to a promotion. There’s much more of an effect on a consumer experiencing a product than you get with 15 TV ads.”

Marketers can benefit from mall marketing beyond simple brand reinforcement. New York City-based Clairol sponsors a mall tour handled by EventNet that cuts long locks for free, then donates the clippings to “Locks of Love,” a program that creates wigs for people who’ve lost their hair due to medical conditions. “Mall marketing is a chance to speak directly to our customers, and it’s especially effective when it’s part of a charity tie-in,” says Clairol spokes-person Ellen Anderson.

Tenants are also getting involved. New York City-based Champs Sports, for instance, this year ties with Atlanta-based Sprite’s NBA All-Star voting campaign. Sprite’s major ballot bonanza will take place in 2,500 movie theaters, but the soda maker gains additional support from Champs through in-store P-O-P encouraging shoppers to vote. Champs customers receive scratch-and-win cards offering a grand-prize trip to the big game with store purchases.

While much of the co-marketing attention is given to major malls, outlet shopping centers are quickly becoming promotion destinations, too. Automobile manufacturer Chevrolet, Warren, MI, is teaming with Tanger Outlet Centers, Greensboro, NC, on a holiday sweeps handing randomly chosen winners a 2001 Chevy Venture Warner Bros. minivan and $1,000 Tanger shopping sprees. Shoppers enter the sweeps on-site or online at tangeroutlet.com. The effort includes test drives at participating Chevy dealers, who reward participants with a Tanger Holiday Savings Booklet featuring store discounts. The campaign is part of Tanger’s “Home for the Holidays” campaign running through the end of the month.

For Chevy, the easy logistics associated with mall projects fuel continued efforts. “At the mall, the consumer’s guard is down,” says brand promotion manager Brian Boyd. “They know they won’t be pressured to buy, so they’re more willing to take the time to learn about your product. And you can put the product right in the consumer’s path.”

Tanger is also teaming with pie maker Mrs. Smith’s Bakeries, Suwanee, GA, on an effort in which holiday shoppers receive a voucher for a free frozen pie with any purchase of $75. The partners are swapping links to each other’s Web sites in what is a first for Tanger marketing programs, says director of marketing and promotions Mike Buescher.

The “Home For The Holidays” campaign is being run at all of the company’s 29 outlet centers in 20 states through signage in public areas and point-of-purchase displays in Tanger’s 1,100 tenant stores. Newspaper and radio ads support. The company is expecting 12 million shoppers this holiday season, says Buescher.

Hit `em Where They Is Why is mall marketing becoming more sophisticated? Because it targets potential buyers in an ideal situation, when they’re not only shopping but doing a little socializing as well; because retailers have become more interested in cooperating with mall-wide initiatives than in years past; and because many mall operators have created miniature marketing shops at corporate HQ to create promotional partnerships with brands that drive traffic to both the malls and their tenants.

“Many of the mall operators we work with have goals that are similar to ours – driving traffic,” says Maria Hom, director of marketing services with San Francisco-based Visa USA. “Like us, they’re interested in emphasizing the individuality of their properties.”

Malls remain an especially powerful marketing tool during the holidays because their appeal for consumers is not merely commercial, but social. “Experiential marketing” may be the latest buzz word tossed around the promotion industry, but many could argue malls have been ideal venues for that kind of marketing all along.

Believe it or not, mall operators are even being quite choosy about which brands they’ll give full access to their properties. “We have to make sure that our marketing partnerships are best for all malls and that they drive incremental revenue,” says Cathy Domanico, vp-consumer marketing with Chicago-based General Growth Properties, which partnered with Visa on the Grinch promotion.

Better start hunting for that parking spot now.