Michelle Daniels (for Tactics UK):
How did you become involved in the shopping centre industry?
Eileen Connolly: I
originally trained as a teacher of physical education and had
never wanted to do anything else. At the age of 21, I took a
year out as president of the student’s union and had a bad
knee injury, so that was the end of sport as a career. I
worked in sales and retail management for a sports company
where I ended up doing some advertising and sponsorship work.
That led to joining Donaldsons in 1982.
I began in a position described as promotions manager, [whose
posting] asked if I could run a programme of self-financing
promotions, could I write a radio commercial and did I like
shopping? I had been in one Canadian shopping centre as a
student, and that was just about enough to get me the job.
M.D.: What has been the
most significant change in the marketing sector of the
industry since joining Donaldsons?
E.C.: The biggest change
is the professionalism of the people now in the industry.
When we started, the great premise was if the shopping centre
was busy, then it must be successful. There was little or no
research, and there was no recognition of the target audience,
market segmentation or understanding anything that led you to
drive sales as opposed to footfall. The expenditure in those
days was really on an event-by-event basis, and I think the
early pioneers of the business probably did some very good
event management, but little of which was actually marketing.
M.D.: Doesn’t that still
exist in shopping centres today?
E.C.: Well, I think at
the top of our business, we are as professional as in any
other marketing sector, but there remains a big job to be done
in education and training to move the role on from event
management and promotions to applying proper marketing
principles.
M.D.: So, is that the
biggest challenge facing the industry today?
E.C.: I think the biggest
challenge is that marketing professionals coming into the
shopping centre environment today are required to have many
more skills than they did originally. We are now expected to
be able to handle PR—from good news to crisis. We are asked to
do professional event management and we’re expected to be able
to direct and implement market research, interpret [its
findings] and put it into practice, in addition to planning
advertising, creative work and media
selection. Then there’s customer service, customer service
recovery, communication with retailers, and not just on the
ground but through head offices. You are asked to be a very
well rounded marketing professional. And because there is no
real education process for this profession, people come into
the industry with different skills, which is positive, but
then they have to rapidly learn the rest on the job!
M.D.: And mall income is
another ‘hot topic’ at the moment that marketers have to
consider?
E.C.: Well, the irony is
that although it’s now being talked about as commercial
income, that was what was on my job description 22 years ago,
under the label of self-financing promotions. When I started
there was no marketing budget, except perhaps a small sum on
the service charge for Christmas. You were expected to make
the money. Marketing planning was very fluid because if you
didn’t make your income, you couldn’t spend it.
M.D.: It’s almost gone
full circle then?
E.C.: It has gone full
circle, but everything is much more sophisticated than it was
and there are more channels for communicating with the
customer. Our media choices in the early days really were
press and radio. Television was too expensive for the majority
of budgets, door drops and direct mail had never been heard
of, you couldn’t email or use the Web, so it was a fairly
limited selection we had to make the most of as best we
could.
M.D.: With your
involvement in the ICSC, BCSC and RMG, how do you manage to
achieve all that you do in your day job?
E.C.: The interesting
thing is that the work for the BCSC and ICSC is all related to
what we do daily. I am a great believer that both of these
organisations have got much to offer within the business and
by sharing ideas, whether it’s on seminars, committees,
conferences or awards programmes, we can all learn from them.
I’ve been very lucky that I’ve had the opportunity to be
involved.
M.D.: Are the Purple
Apples and the RMG making a difference to the industry or are
they just talking shops?
E.C.: I think at the
beginning people thought, “What are we going to do with this?
It’s just another committee”. But I think when you look at
what has been achieved in a very short time, both by the
Purple Apple Task Force and what is now the BCSC Retail
Marketing Committee, it’s quite substantial. We’ve run
successful seminars and training courses, and the Purple
Apples now stand as one of the best marketing award programmes
in the industry worldwide. And I think that when you have 365
people turning up for an awards dinner, then it’s been fully
accepted as part of our business life.
M.D.: You’ve been
involved with the Maxi Awards for four years now and you’re
chairing it this year?
E.C.: I’ve been a Maxi
judge since 2000 and I’ve been invited to chair the 2005 Maxi
Awards, which will be the first time it’s been done outside of
the United States. The programme is in it’s 34th year and
attracts between 400-450 entries from around the world. The
number of entries this past year showed around half of them
coming from outside of the US which is fantastic.
M.D.: Is that a sign that
maybe the US are no longer leading the way in terms of
shopping centre marketing, and maybe the rest of the world has
caught up?
E.C.: Of the 23 entries
that the UK and Europe put in, through the ICSC Solal
Marketing Awards,19 have made it through to be a Maxi
finalist. In other words, they’ve made the top 50% in each of
their categories, and I think that is a clear sign that what
we are doing is extremely impressive. When I first judged the
Maxis, I judged 70 submissions and I thought all of those
out-stretched what we were doing at the time. [Even today], I
would suggest that in the UK and Europe, lots of people are
doing their jobs very well with a small number exceeding.
That said, we are far more focussed than we were five years
ago, and much better than we were 10 years ago. We are very
hopeful that from 2004 onwards, we’ll see some Maxi Awards for
the UK.
M.D.: How do we build on
the progress we’ve made so far?
E.C.: I think it’s very
important that we see a proper training and career development
programme for people in the industry in the UK. It’s clear
that we get young marketing professionals coming into the
industry, and collectively we all give them very good training
as they have to pick up many skills so quickly. But then we
lose them to other service industries, and that’s a problem
because there is no real career structure. There are one or
two recruitment agencies that help, but there is nothing to
push careers on. We need to see a formal qualification. I’d
like to see that happen maybe through the BCSC education
programme, whereby the College of Estate Management Diploma in
Management develops a course for marketing. I think the job
that we are being asked to do, with speciality leasing and
income generation is dividing into two types of marketing
individuals. In the US and Canada they have marketing
managers/directors, but they also have somebody working with
them to do those more commercial programmes.
I also think that there is a big issue over consolidation,
whereby you have five or six major US mall owners, each with
100 malls and corporate marketing driving what used to be done
on the ground. The problem with that is the risk of stifling
original thought and ingenuity of individual marketing
managers. I recently judged the Northern Ireland marketing
awards and that was very interesting to see where centres were
owned corporately and those individual centres, and there was
a marked difference between the two and how they were
presented. I have a fear, which probably stems from some of
the big US corporates when you see the programmes that they
are investing in, that the marketing managers become merely
implementers and they are no longer innovators. If you lose
innovation, you lose everything!
M.D.: Who has inspired
you and been your mentor throughout your marketing career?
E.C.: It’s a very
difficult one. Because we were in an industry very early on,
and didn’t have anyone before us, we almost had to create our
own industry. I think it’s probably the people within
Donaldsons, who have always supported me and taken that view,
through good times and bad, that marketing was essential. So
the Donaldsons partners, particularly Iain Forbes, John
Nettleton and now Bryan Duncan and Peter Mawson. I would also
have to say our clients. They had the trust early on to give
us projects to work with, and still do today. My husband is
also in the retail property industry, so he is a great source
of support.
M.D.: If you ever left
the industry, what would you do?
E.C.: I’d love to cook
for a living. I really enjoy cooking, and even after a hard
day at the office, I still look forward to going home and
preparing dinner. It’s very relaxing.
M.D.: What else do you do
to relax?
E.C.: I play golf and I
love to travel, and we have been fortunate to visit some
wonderful places.
M.D.: Do you have any
favourite holiday destination?
E.C.: The Gulf of Mexico,
Florida. It has great golf courses, the seafood is excellent,
and it’s a great place for shopping!
Eileen Connolly, director of retail marketing, Donaldsons