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Helpful elves come to the rescue of the gifting-impaired
Géraud heads to La Part-Dieu
with his mobile phone glued to his ear. The 36-year-old is your typical business
executive who spends his days rushing from place to place. Today, he’s decided
to stop at the Lyon shopping centre to find a gift for Diane, his fiancee. He
has no clue what to get her, can only spare one hour and would love to squeeze
in a couple more errands: finding a GPS for himself and booking their next
holiday. Géraud is La Part-Dieu’s prototype shopper No. 3 and he’s just the kind
of customer for whom the centre has created a shopping counselling service.
Visitors to the La Part-Dieu Website can see the story unravel on the centre’s
Web TV, which captures the efficient manner with which trend consultant and
shopping expert, Béatrice B. takes up Géraud’s challenge with the help of
knowledgeable retail staff at the Nocibé perfume shop, Fnac and Thomas Cook.
La Part-Dieu’s online ‘station’ answers the needs of three prototypes of
shoppers: the busy executive, the young mom and the fashionista, demonstrating
how in tune the centre is with the needs of its shoppers and how its mix of
stores and services enables it to meet those needs, all in an environment that
is conducive to delivering an agreeable shopping experience.
At no time is this kind of service more crucial than in the run-up to Christmas,
when every high-street retailer, shopping centre and online store is vying for
consumers’ time and money. With so many options at the gift hunter’s disposal,
shopping centres are working hard to make the gifting experience as efficient
and stress-free as possible.
At Lakeside Shopping Centre (Lakeside) in West Thurrocks, UK, the hunt begins
even before customers arrive. At any given time, shoppers stuck in finding the
right presents can pick up the phone and call Lakeside’s personal shopper,
Angela Poplett, to arrange free, one-hour accompanied gift shopping experience.
Customers give Poplett a few details over the phone about who they are buying
for and what their budget is, and she’ll plan a shopping route for them before
taking them straight to the shops to make sure they get what they need. Anything
they buy will also be gift wrapped for free.
For many customers, the prospect of getting most is their gift shopping done in
one visit is an attractive one, but a one-time spend can be tough on the wallet.
That’s why Lakeside runs a Christmas Club, which allows members to put money
aside in increments into a club account throughout the year so that, come
Christmas time, they can use their pre-loaded gift card or voucher to shop at
more than 300 shops, restaurants and entertainment venues at Lakeside and its
neighbouring retail park.
Lakeside began promoting this year’s scheme as soon as Christmas 2007 wrapped
up, offering a free £10 (€12.65) gift voucher to anyone who opened a Christmas
Club account in January 2008.
With every £100 (€126.50) they save, customers get an extra £5 (€6.30) added to
their account. Shoppers can save up to a maximum of £1,000 (€1,265) on their
account, which earns them a bonus £50 (€63) to spend. But they’ll have to make
at least five separate deposits into their account by 1st November to qualify
for the promotion, and Lakeside only allows one Christmas Club account per
household.
The voucher won’t be redeemable until after 1st November, thereby ensuring that
shoppers get used to the idea of placing money in the account for later use and
that they do come back to Lakeside when the time comes to shop again for
Christmas.
When they do, they can shop with ease, knowing that they have already saved the
money necessary to pay for the gifts. And in case the shoppers do pick
everything out in a short period of time, they won’t have to worry about
dragging shopping bags and parcels around all day, either. Lakeside offers a
Shop & Drop service, which allows customers to leave their purchases at a
drop-off point and collect them by car at a designated spot once they’ve
finished shopping.
Kingdom Shopping Centre in Glenrothes, Scotland, also helped shoppers out last
Christmas and, at the same time, increased its footfall on Thursday nights by
offering gift wrapping and a free carry-to-car service during those late-night
shopping evenings.
Retailer Poundland sponsored the complimentary gift-wrapping service by
supplying the wrapping paper, while another tenant provided customer service
staff with free gift-wrapping training. The service was free, but optional
donations were accepted on behalf of the Kingdom Kids charity. Meanwhile, centre
security officers and additional staff handled the carry-to-car service.
But it was earlier this year that Kingdom Shopping Centre and Clyde Shopping
Centre in Clydebank developed their most effective gift-focused promotion, one
that the centres will likely use for this coming Christmas.
The promotion was for Mother’s Day and the centres employed ‘gift cherubs’ to
roam the malls over one weekend and give customers ideas on what to get for
their mum. The cherubs handed out Mother’s Day Gift Guides, which were compiled
with information from centre retailers and promoted their best ideas and offers.
“The humorously friendly cherubs livened up the malls, causing quite a buzz with
both customers and retailers, and also helping to boost sales and promote the
wide variety of stores available at Kingdom & Clyde,” said Anna Pringle,
marketing manager.
No matter how good your centre is at matching shoppers with the gifts they seek,
you won’t get your tills ringing if you can’t rise above the typical clutter
that overwhelms the retail marketplace during the Christmas season.|
The Macerich Company is one group that has figured out how to boost the profile
of its key properties.
It was no happenstance that Macerich Company shopping centres located in various
spots across the US ended up in the news last Christmas.
Whether it was the WNBC cameraman showing up at Queens Center to shoot a
four-part series on great holiday gifts, KNBC’s Your LA launching its holiday
shopping coverage with a segment on Westside Pavilion’s Banana Republic and Bare
Essentials stores, or Denver’s 5280 Magazine singling out the martini glasses
from Z Gallerie at Twenty Ninth Street as the perfect hostess gifts, every news
story resulted from Macerich corporate marketers’ PR efforts, namely a
portfolio-wide programme that, every holiday, places news leads in the hands of
reporters and editors nationwide. The strategy, coupled with local initiative,
not only raises each centre’s profile, increasing the chances of its promotional
message being heard amidst the holiday banter, but it also has a direct impact
on store sales of featured and other merchandise. That, in turn, raises
centre-wide productivity.
“Working with the team at Queens Center helps us to target our outreach,
allowing us to better connect with our customers at a local level,” commented
Kate Parkhouse, PR manager for JCPenney.
To Anita Walker, assistant VP of public relations at Macerich, the success of
these endeavours comes down to timing.
“We believe our retailer-focused, consumer PR programme is unique in the
shopping centre industry. Our centres are perfectly positioned to bring together
what’s hot and fresh for local shoppers, and newspapers and TV stations respond
to this,” she explained in the January/February 2008 edition of the Macerich
Happenings corporate newsletter.\
“It’s a particularly effective strategy when retail news is busiest—during the
holidays.”
Another reason for the news leads’ appeal is the fact that, like shopping centre
marketers, editors and reporters are under pressure to find new angles on a
familiar theme every time the Christmas shopping season comes around.
Macerich notes that its centres can give the media a little breathing room by
providing a platform for covering fashion and gift-giving trends.
Each year, the Macerich head office PR team arms its centre marketers with a new
set of trends and ready-made story suggestions. This, after the local teams have
already secured participation from their own retailers.
“I was so impressed with how well organised you all were at Tysons. Especially
already having a list of stores that were the most ‘media friendly’ made my job
sooooo much better,” one reporter from WJLA-TV (the ABC affiliate in Washington,
DC) told the centre managers in an e-mail.
“We try to do everything through the filter of what makes sense for our
retailers, and we think our unique approach to PR benefits both retailers and
our centres,” said Tom Unis, Macerich senior VP of national leasing services and
retailer relations.
“We hope more retailers will want to partner with us to showcase their
merchandise in this innovative programme.”
In Wiesbaden, Germany, visual branding is what marketers used to lure shoppers
to Lilien-Carré, designing seasonal advertisements that not only outline
upcoming events and promotions, but also conveyed a sense of atmosphere and
Yuletide magic, with a focus on traditional gift hunting..
While some members of a centre’s marketing team are busy catering to customers’
gifting needs, others need to pay attention to the less commercial side of the
festive season.
Just as shopping centres have been focusing more on their corporate social
responsibility, so too have their customers become more concerned with the
impact that their consumption habits have on their environment, community and
the rest of the world.
Over the past few years, there has been a proliferation of gifts that reconcile
shoppers’ desire to buy goods and services at Christmastime with their need to
adhere to a lifestyle that is more in line with their values.
Not only do shoppers want to find gifts for the important people in their lives,
but they also feel compelled to help others in the spirit of the Holidays.
Novy Smíchov in Prague enabled shoppers to do just that last year when it
partnered with UNICEF. To support the children’s charity, customers could text
‘DMS UNICEF’ to the appropriate programme number and 27 CZK (85 pence or €1)
from every 30 CZK (94 pence or €1.20) SMS they sent would go toward supporting
the work that UNICEF does for children at home and abroad.
There is no shortage of non-profit organisation that would jump at the chance to
partner with a shopping centre to raise awareness of its cause as well as funds
to back its ongoing charitable endeavours. You simply need to identify which
ones best fit your brand positioning. And while you’ve got your mind open to new
possibilities, consider the fact that while Christmas is the most high-profile
of the winter holidays, there are many other celebrations going on during that
time of year—holidays such as Diwali (Hindi), Eid Al-Fitr (Muslim) and Hanukkah
(Jewish) and Kwanzaa (African heritage).
These are important holidays during which shoppers also look for gifts and could
use your centre’s assistance.
Brent Cross in London understands the value of reaching out to the many cultural
communities that exist in the city.
Last 4th November, Brent Cross held Diwali celebrations in its centre court,
with Bollywood dancers, henna tattooing, food tasting, paper printing workshops
and a painting exhibition with local schools.
The centre then held Eid celebrations in conjunction with the Muslim Welfare
Society, erecting a giant mosque in one of its malls. Event highlights included
storytelling, food tasting and calligraphy.
If your budget can’t support multiple celebrations, use your Website to provide
gifting and other holiday services to cultural communities.
Most shopping centres already provide gift ideas and registries on their sites
for the Christmas season, so it would simply be a matter of expanding the scope
of the content to include gift ideas and tips for other holidays.
Doing so will not only increase the number of potential customers who will want
to shop at your centre, but it will allow you to lengthen what is already a
lucrative time of year for the retail sector.
While Christmas decorations usually go up right after Halloween pumpkins have
been put away, the real Christmas rush doesn’t start before December.
However, if you add celebrations like Diwali, Eid and Hanukkah to your list of
marketing promotions, you can actually increase footfall and centre productivity
beginning as early as November. Then carry on with Kwanzaa-focused gift services
and promotions post-Christmas to start out strong in the New Year.
Gifting, particularly for the Holidays, will always be a compelling reason for
consumers to shop, but the quality of your services during a typically hectic
time of year is what will convince them to choose your centre over the
competition.
You just never know when Géraud might pop into your centre in search of great
gifts and anything else he might need on the fly.