Mother Nature’s Holidays

It’s hard to think of greenhouse gas emissions, the loss of the Nile or the plight of the polar bear when you’re frantically hunting through the shops of your local centre to find a gift for your 14-year-old nephew. A secure and healthy future for his children and grand-children surely would be a priceless offering, but you haven’t been taught to think that way.
The December Holidays are as much about consumerism as they are about loving others and supporting world peace. Yet some shopping centre marekters are using the exact time when they have their clientele’s full attention to raise awareness of environmental issues and make the case for a greener form of consumerism.
Here are a few of the programmes that shopping centre marketers implemented during last year’s holiday season, and some additional ones that can be used year-round.

Village Green Gets Real

Village Green Mall walked its talk last Christmas when it spent nearly 10 percent of its marketing budget to implement the Get Real—Go Green programme. It was the Vernon, Canada, shopping centre’s way of leveraging its profile as environmentally responsible to inspire all its stakeholders to become stewards of their natural resources.
“What better time than Christmas to share the gift of green—the mall’s commitment to incorporating green philosophies, technologies and processes into our daily and longer-term business activities,” said Heather Hawthorne, marketing director.
“To reinforce the eco-message, the mall took on a leadership role and developed green marketing promotions themed around the “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle’ mantra that stakeholders could participate in and benefit from.”
Village Green Mall implemented a promotional campaign that included advertising (print, radio, indoor), a merchant package and recycling contest, and seasonal décor. It partnered with Alexis Park Elementary, Vernon’s financially challenged inner-city school, and invited 250 students and faculty members to create ornaments out of recycled and reused materials for the mall’s Christmas trees.
The centre also set up new recycling receptacles for beverage containers, and it ran a sales promotion in which shoppers who purchased a minimum of $100 (£50 or €65) in mall gift certificates during the month of December would receive a campaign-branded, cotton tote bag.
The scheme boosted gift certificate sales to $118,694 (£60,572 or €76,660) , which was16 percent higher than the sales recorded in December 2006—according to the centre, 64 percent of gift certificate sales generated that month were as a result of the promotion.
The performance also benefited a local environmental stewardship organisation, to which Village Green Mall donated an amount equivalent to two percent of its gift certificate sales proceeds. 
Meanwhile, the Get Real—Go Green Web contest rewarded involvement in the centre’s community-wide Can and Bottle Drive, using tote bags and mall gift certificates as incentives.
The money raised from that drive financed 14 environmental field trips for the Alexis Park Elementary students, and all revenue from the centre’s new can and bottle receptacles continues to be donated to the school.
The Get Real—Go Green programme enabled Village Green Mall to raise its profile in the community, thanks to sustained media coverage. The centre’s initiatives got 35 minutes of free radio airtime and  just over 182 column inches of publicity in local and regional newspapers.
More importantly, the programme enabled the centre to address its waste reduction and recycling processes, as well as raise tenant awareness. These were key factors in Village Green Mall achieving the BOMA of Canada’s Go Green Plus certification this past March. . 

The Bottom Line

Village Green Mall incurred the following expenses to implement its Get Real—Go Green Christmas campaign:

Ad agency fees: $6,945.00
Print ad placement: $2,407.62
Signage: $1,755.13
Branded canvas tote bags: $2,800.00
• 500 bags at $5.60 each
Donations: $2,400.00
• Two percent of total value of December 2007 gift certificate sales rewarded to local environmental stewardship organisations
Radio : $4,302.33
Gift certificate prizes: $50.00
• Prizes for Can & Bottle Drive Web Contest
Clear plastic bags: $138.63|
• Bags for merchants’ Can & Bottle
Food for student luncheon: $558.37
Total cost: $21,357.08

The total cost of the programme works out to £10,955.80 or €13,942.18.
This represents 9.2 percent of Village Green Mall’s 2007 marketing budget.
Village Green Mall also received $4,569 (£2,343.64 or €2,983.89) in discounts, volunteer time, PSAs and in-kind donations to support its green campaign. 

The Science Of Wrapping

A1=2(ab-ab-bc-c2)•. Don’t feel bad if you don’t understand this formula. They didn’t teach that one in science class when you were in school. But it’s one that today’s eco-conscious consumers learned at Bluewater last Christmas season, thanks to the bright mind of Warwick Dumas.
The researcher in the University of Leicester’s Department of Mathematics developed the handy solution to put an end to unnecessary wrapping paper wastage—it is estimated that, over Christmas, as much as 83 square kilometres of wrapping paper end up in UK rubbish bins, according to Waste Online (www.WasteOnline.org.uk).
To Bluewater shoppers, the formula was one way of demonstrating that the length of wrapping paper they use should be equivalent to the perimeter of the side of the gift, with no more than 2cm allowed for an overlap. As for the width of the wrapping paper, it should be just a little over the sum of the width and the depth of the gift. Dumas also provided formulas for wrapping unusually shaped gifts: h/(pi–2)•.
Bluewater gave its customers a chance to practice their maths-based skills at a new gift-wrapping workshop, which provided participants with a step-by-step guide on how to wrap items and save paper.
“Our aim is to help consumers wrap their presents efficiently and economically this Christmas,” said Fiona Campbell-Reilley, Bluewater’s marketing manager, at the time.
“With 330 stores under one roof, we know that our consumers will be buying lots of presents this season. By using this formula, Bluewater shoppers can make an effort to become as green as their Christmas tree.”
Besides applying the formulas, shoppers got these other tips:
•  Allocate no more than 10 minutes per present when wrapping
• Don’t wrap presents at an angle as it uses more paper than wrapping it the traditional way
• If you are wrapping a cylinder, and its radius is more than  88 percent of the height (e.g. a tin of chocolates), wrap it as you would a box.
• If you are wrapping a bottle, roll it along the paper so that the length of paper used is the circumference of the bottle
• If you have bought a present that is an unusual shape, place it in a box or in a gift bag
• Keep the best wrapping paper that you receive from others and re-use it to wrap a smaller present later
• Recycle and re-use your gift decorations. .

•  Notes:
A1= area needed
a, b and c are the dimensions of the cuboid
(a= longest, c= shortest)
h: height

The Greening of Santa

Loch Lomond Shores shopping center in Scotland finely tuned its Christmas program into its regular ongoing concerns about the world environment by presenting shoppers with a Green Santa during the last Holiday season.
"In response to our very active concern about the environment, which we work on throughout the whole year, we thought that we would like to remind our shoppers and their children about making a difference this festive season," said Clare Gemmell, centre manager. "We hope that small reminders about the importance of the environment, wildlife and the atmosphere in general will help to create a more cautious and aware group of adults over the next 10 years."
Children visiting the mall's Green Santa each received a free gift. But in keeping with the green theme, gifts were no longer made of hard plastics. Instead, kids enjoyed cardboard reindeer antlers with a reminder to recycle them along with their other paper products. Kids also received a mail-in child membership card for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and a free entry ticket for the mall's onsite Aquarium.
"Although primarily we were a little concerned that Green Santa would confuse children, the exact opposite has happened! Without that domineering red coat he seems more welcoming and some children haven't even noticed the different color," Gemmell said.
Loch Lomond Shores also decorated its trees with homemade decorations from local pupils. The ornaments were all designed by school children and made out of items normally thrown out at home.
"It's hard to believe just how pretty plastic bottles and cans filled with tinkling old buttons can be, but the feedback has been absolutely tree-mendous!" concluded Gemmell. 

Green Week & Eco-Makeover

Festival Place hosted its Green Week last 27th October through 4th November.
Shoppers attending the event could find out what the centre and some of its retailers had been doing to be more environmentally friendly. Representatives from the Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council shared advice on what shoppers could and couldn’t recycle at home, while children learned how to turn every day rubbish into something practical during weekend craft workshops.
One of the Green Week’s highlights was a competition that Festival Place ran in association with Martins Renault and Gazette Newspapers; a competition to win a Renault Clio Freeway, one of the carmaker’s new Eco2 cars.
To enter, shoppers had to look out for the coupons in the Basingstoke Gazette or pick up a competition form at the Martins Renault stand at festival Place in the hopes of becoming one of the weekly winners.
Names of a dozen of those weekly winners were then picked out of a bag during Festival Place’s light switch-on ceremony, with each one receiving a key to try on the Clio. A delighted Rachel Platt ended up with the right key and a new green ride.
Last month, Festival Place extended its environmental initiatives by choosing to recycle its old uniforms. 
The staff opted to donate the old uniforms to Devizes Textiles (DT), a textile recycling company in South West England.
DT collected and sorted all the Festival Place uniforms, exporting the quality clothing to Africa to be re-worn and recycling anything that couldn’t be re-worn into items for industrial use. The donated garments included 350 shirts, 140 pairs of trousers, 50 jumpers and cardigans, 20 Hi-viz coats, 30 Hi-viz waistcoats, 60 fleeces, 30 ties, 20 blazers and four suits.
"We are glad that we can offer this service to Festival Place,” said Danny Williamson, partner at Devizes Textiles.
“This is the first shopping centre that we have worked with and we look forward to working with them in the future to help reduce Basingstoke's landfill." 

Environmentally Friendly by Design

When Fishergate Shopping Centre (Fishergate) wanted to send holiday wishes to everyone on its mailing list, it turned to children for design inspiration.
Dozens of schools in the Preston, UK, region participated in the centre’s Design a Christmas Card competition.
Forty of the best designs were displayed in the centre—a panel of judges picked them out of more than 500 entries—with shoppers voting for their favourite one.
Claran Hasnip from St. Teresa’s Catholic Primary School ended up winning £50 (€63) worth of Fishergate vouchers, plus £350 (€443) worth of credit at the Book Clearance Centre for his school.
Like Fishergate, several shopping centres like to involve their customers in the design of everything from greeting cards and shopping bags to seasonal posters and T-shirts.
Follow their lead and make it a green endeavour by asking your shoppers to design what is possibly one of the most environmentally friendly items you can offer: your holiday gift cards. To encourage participation, run the competition from your Website and promote it via your e-newsletter.