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Focus on Portugal
In recent years, the Portuguese Republic has grabbed more
headlines overseas for its role in the US-led war on terrorism than
for anything else. But the country of just over 10.5 million people
has been up to much more than that. This past 17th May, Portugal
took over the presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the
Council of Europe. Then, one week later, ex-prime minister António
Guterres was chosen as the next UN High Commissioner of Refugees.
These big positions are a testimony to the work this coastal nation
has undertaken over the past two decades to revitalize itself.
Ever since its accession to the European Economic Community in 1985,
Portugal has seen its commercial sector evolve and diversify. Urban
development outside the traditional city centre hubs created new
opportunities in the retail real estate industry, with shopping
centres emerging as primary forces. With innovative retail formats
and expanded choices at their disposal, consumers embraced new
shopping habits. This, in turn, made Portugal an increasingly
appealing market for local and foreign retail real estate investors.
And while many Portuguese shopping centre marketers will gladly tell
you that their industry is still young and growing when compared to
other markets like the USA, a close look at the country’s schemes
shows that the industry is, at the very least, a quick study.
This year, Portugal is proving to be a real force in shopping centre
marketing, with five programmes named among the finalists of the
ICSC Maxi Awards programme—the performance comes on the heels of the
ICSC Solal Marketing Awards in which Portuguese companies took home
five Merits.
Backed up by visionary developers such as Sonae Imobiliária, AM
Management Portugal and NorteShopping, these shopping centres have
as good a chance as any to walk away from San Diego’s Spreckels
Theatre with a MAXI this coming October. Here’s a look at what
they’re presenting.
Norte Shopping: Fashion Catalogue
The goal:
To communicate NorteShopping’s distinctive characteristics using
media that would appeal to an upscale clientele. The initiative
would also have to involve tenants and enable the centre to create a
captive customer database, thereby stimulating shopper visits and
increasing sales.
The strategy:
Playing up its commercial offer in fashion and decoration,
NorteShopping developed a full-fledge fashion catalogue to unveil
the latest style collection. The publication’s layout and imagery
were designed to be distinctive and sophisticated, while the content
was broad enough to cover all of the centre’s retail brand
categories, including classic, fashion, sportswear, undergarments,
kids, beauty, party and decoration. Marketers felt this approach
would not only make it easier for readers to scan the publication,
but also allow for a more natural integration of tenants.
NorteShopping printed 7,500 copies of its catalogue and thee were
enclosed in the Visão weekly magazine, which was delivered via
direct-mail to subscribers in the Greater Oporto and Northern Coast
region. Another 29,000 catalogues were enclosed in the Público daily
newspaper, while other copies were direct mailed to the centre’s
database and to opinion makers, handed out at the NorteShopping
information desk and in shops, as well as placed prominently in
sitting areas. NorteShopping even made its catalogue available
online at norteshopping.pt, its own Website.
Besides the exclusive catalogue, which took three months to develop,
NorteShopping explored a more promotional angle by releasing a
discount booklet insert. It contained vouchers for discounts of five
to 40 percent, and details of limited-time gift-with-purchase
offers.
The Results:
With 95 percent of fashion and decoration tenants participating in
the catalogue project, NorteShopping was able to register 1,000 new
records in its database, while 253 new people registered on its
Website. The centre also reversed negative sales and footfall
trends.
Centro Colombo: Hollywood Dream Cars
The goal:
To reinforce Centro Colombo’s position as a promoter of prestige and
mediatic events.
The strategy:
Centro Colombo selected the Hollywood Dream Cars event, which
presented an opportunity to host what was once a private collection
of cars that were “Hollywood stars” in blockbusters movies.
Six famous cars were displayed: the Ford Anglia from Harry Potter,
the Lincoln Continental from Batman, Herbie’s Volkswagen Carocha,
Mr. Bean’s Morris Mini, The Flinstones’ Golf Cart and the Ford
Taunus from Robocop.
Centro Colombo says each car was situated in scenery that related to
the picture that made it famous, and set up against a backdrop that
explained its history and role in the film.
Hollywood Dream Cars was unveiled in grand style during a “premiere”
which VIPs (e.g. actors, models and telecasters) attended. National
media was also present, including print titles such as Caras, Nova
Gente, VIP, Auto Focus, 24 Horas, Público and Jornal da Regiáo.
Portugal's three national TV stations—RTP, SIC and TVI—answered the
call as well, while Antena 3 represented radio media.
Once up and running, the exhibition drew car lovers who could pose
with their favourite ride and take home a souvenir picture. A
professional photographer belonging to one of the centre shops took
the pictures and 25 percent of the income reverted back to Centro
Colombo’s budget.
The Results:
Centro Colombo not only hosted another high-profile event, it also
increased its footfall by eight percent. The media coverage received
achieved was more than eight times the investment Centro Colombo
made in Hollywood Dream Cars.
Seven Sonae Imobiliária shopping centres: The World of Chocolate
The goal:
To develop exclusive and innovative events whose subject matter and
scale could capture the attention of the media and visitors, while
operating modestly enough to accommodate medium-sized shopping
centres with limited budgets.
The strategy:
Sonae Imobiliária produced The World of Chocolate, a standard
travelling event that could be customised to the specific needs of
seven participating shopping centres. Working from the original
Chocolate theme, each shopping centre made the event its own by
approaching it from a unique angle. Using these sub-themes, such as
The Sea,Trains and Stork, allowed the individual properties to show
off their personality, underline their brand positioning and create
fresh news for the media. The World of Chocolate invited shoppers to
participate in various activities, including:
• Hands in Chocolate, a workshop space for children supervised by a
promoter dressed up as a cake maker.
• Chocolate in Sculpture comprised of display cases revealing works
created for each centre.
• The Art of Chocolate featured a suitably-equipped kitchen where a
cake maker and helpers could build, day by day, a mega-composition
and explain to visitors how to work with the ingredient.
Closing the tour, MaiaShopping centre present a team of Portuguese
cake makers who showed off the creations they planned to use later
at the World Cake Making Championships.
The Results:
Public Relations campaigns and an online campaign delivered via the
participating centres’ Websites (this involved a competition to win
travel for four people to Switzerland), as well as internal and
external communication helped Sonae reach its goal of media coverage
and high footfall. A total of nearly 17,959 children attended the
chocolate workshops, while the advertising value of the news
coverage the centres received represented 156 percent of the cost of
the event. Each shopping centre received coverage online, in the
press and on TV, with four of them also getting valuable publicity
on the radio.
Forum Algarve: Ice Skating for a Green Forest
The goal:
To find a new way for Forum Algarve to fulfill its mission of being
a promoter of social, cultural, sports and solidarity activities
that have a straight connection to the local community. The
programme would be implemented for the 2004 Christmas trade period.
The strategy:
Forum Algarve decided to support the reforestation of the Algarve
mountains of Serra do Caldeirão, 40 percent of whose trees were
wiped away by fires during the previous two summers. In addition to
replacing what were once lush acres with a black mantle of smoke and
charcoal, the century fires devastated houses and goods.
Forum Algarve partnered with the local municipalities of Loulé and
S. Braéas (the closest to the centre), as well as with the Forest
Producers Association of Serra do Caldeirão to develop the
Environmental Solidarity Campaign—Recovery of Burned Areas in Serra
do Caldeirão. The campaign would aim to raise funds to support the
plantation of cork-trees in an area covering an estimated 500,000
square metres.
The partners came up with a novel idea for a region internationally
associated with sun and the sea: a 250-square-metre ice-skating
rink.
Visitors could enjoy 20 minutes of skating for a nominal charge—the
equivalent necessary to buy and plant one cork tree, with all funds
going directly to the reforestation cause.
To encourage participation, Forum Algarve created point-of-sale
incentives. It recreated a miniature version of the Serra do
Caldeirão to show visitors how the area was before the blazes
destroyed it. Next to the model, the centre placed a photograph,
statistics and maps exhibition focusing on the burned areas, not to
mention images of the fires and personal/environmental damages.
Forum Algarve set up a highly visual ticket counter for the
ice-rink, placing a large wall panel with 20,000 cork tree spaces.
Whenever customers bought a ticket to the ice-rink, they received a
little cork tree stamp to stick on the panel, as a symbolic act of
planting a tree in the Serra do Caldeirão.
The solidarity campaign ran from 6th November 2004 to 17th January
2005.
The results:
• Forum Algarve’s campaign garnered much media attention, with
prime-time segments being broadcast on all national TV channels.
• The centre and its partnered exceeded their goal, raising enough
money to plant 638,207 square metres of cork trees in an enhanced
green area of the Serra do Caldeirão.
Arrábida Shopping, ViaCatarina Shopping, CoimbraShopping and MadeiraShopping: Dress a Social Cause
The goal:
To promote the shopping centres’ social responsibility policy,
involve the local community in primary catchment areas, strengthen
tenant involvement and create a fashion-focused, flexible event that
could be adapted to different spaces, target publics and areas of
influence. By producing a common event, the centres would also
generate budget synergies.
The strategy:
The shopping centres opted to embrace breast cancer as their social
solidarity cause, creating Dress a Social Cause. The campaign
exhorted the public, particularly women, to put on, adopt and wear a
social cause that affects women around the world.
With the support of several sponsors, each centre held a Dress A
Social Cause event twice during the year: first in spring and then
again in autumn (ArrábidaShopping only held the event once in
spring), hosting a programme stand and a display.
The multi-faceted stand attempted to include themes, issues and
organisations that women were likely to find interesting, including:
1. Food and Well-Being with nutritional advice by professionals;
2. Portuguese Anti-Cancer League Space, where representatives spoke
about their personal experiences with breast cancer and provided
information regarding prevention, treatment and psychological
advice;
3. Know your Hair, which focused on aesthetics and dermatology;
4. Make-up and Manicure with professional advice and preparation
services;
5. Model for a Day, offering space and photographic sessions with
the objective of making a composite. Participants also had a chance
to register with a modelling agency;
6. Let your Children Have Fun while you Dress a Social Cause, a
space just for little ones; and
7. Merchandise space to sell T-shirts and pins. All proceeds went to
the Northern, Central and Funchal regional branches of the
Portuguese Anti-Cancer League.
The Dress A Social Cause display comprised of cases where the
centres could promote its fashion offering. This was the space to
highlight participating shops, with the shopping centres displaying
2,100 articles of clothing and accessories.
The partnering centres used PR, indoor/outdoor advertising and
online marketing to promote Dress a Social Cause.
The Results:
Nearly all of the shopping centre’s tenants participated in the
programme’s promotion, with donations to the Portuguese Anti-Cancer
League totalling 18,172 euros. Media coverage was valued at 80
percent of the shopping centres’ 263,300-euro investment in the
Dress a Social Cause programme (costs net of sponsorship support and
donations amounted to just over 200,000 euros). n
A Marketer’sView
Tactics UK & EU asked Tiago Vidal of Sonae Sierra to offer his
take on the current state of shopping centre marketing in Portugal.
Here’s what he had to say:
Tactics UK & EU: If you had to give Portuguese shopping centre marketing a state of maturity, what would it be? In other words, in which stage of development is the marketing function?
Tiago Vidal: The marketing of the Portuguese shopping centres is one of the most developed function and this is a fact recognised internationally, mainly by the several awards and distinctions won in the ICSC Jean Louis Solal Awards and the Maxi Awards. This is a result of the high quality and competitive shopping centre market that exists in Portugal, mainly in Lisbon and Porto, that obliges each shopping centre to be very close to is clients and to be pro-active in [satisfying their needs].
Tactics UK & EU: In which area is shopping centre marketing most concentrated (e.g. advertising, special events, sales promotions, entertainment, community outreach)?
Tiago Vidal: I would say that in recent years the shopping centres have evolved from the traditional advertising and sales promotions to a one-to-one interaction with clients through special events, community involvement and creation of more and better services.
Tactics UK & EU: How marketing savvy are Portuguese consumers?
Tiago Vidal: Portuguese consumers have a strong loyalty to the brands they identify with and, at the same time, they like to be surprised and involved by the product providers and shopping centres.
Tactics UK & EU: What, if anything, makes Portuguese shopping centre marketing different from the same function in other countries?
Tiago Vidal: I believe that creativity is a strong point, as well as the quality of the tenant-mix.
Tactics UK & EU: How is the marketing function viewed in the Portuguese shopping centre industry?
Tiago Vidal: Marketing is well understood and respected when it is not seen only as [generating] publicity, but as having a bigger role within the organisation, mainly when the competition starts to be tougher.
New on the Scene
These shopping centres and other retail properties are among those introduced in the Portuguese market this year:
Name Promoter Location GLA (in M2)
Centro Tejo (Phase 2) Sonae Imobiliária Seixal 39,200
CovilhãShopping Sonae Covilhã 16,859
Forum Viseu AM Development Viseu 18,500
Loures Shopping Sonae Imobiliária Loures 38,000
Setúbal Retail park Sonae Imobiliária/
Setúbal 20,000
Miller Developments
Source: APCC.
Market Links
Founded in 1984 as a not-for-profit organisation, the
Portuguese Council of Shopping Centres (APCC) counts 58 members who
represent 74 shopping centres comprising of a total GLA of nearly
1.7 million square metres (including some centres under
construction) and housing a mix of small and large-scale retailers.
These shopping centres are a vital part of the Portuguese economy,
providing more than 65,000 direct jobs.
Under the direction of chair António Sampaio de Mattos of IN.Mont -
Plano Imobiliário Lda., the council’s mission is to protect the
legitimate interests and rights of owners, promoters and managers of
commercial developments designated as shopping centres, enhance
their standing and mediate with public administration entities in
the preparation of legislation.
The APCC’s main activities focus on information dissemination (via a
bi-monthly newsletter, the Shopping-Centros Comerciales em Revistra
magazine, a directory and the council Website), training
(conferences, seminars, technical tours of shopping centres),
institutional relations, investigation (specific studies of the
sector through technical committees operating in marketing and
management, urbanism and legal areas) and public relations.
Council members are also affiliate members of the ICSC, while the
APCC itself is part of the European Property Federation, a
pan-European organisation based in Brussels.
For more information, visit
www.apcc.pt.
DID YOU KNOW?
The city of Coimbra is the oldest seat of learning in
Portugal. Founded in 1290, its namesake university is one of the
oldest in Europe.