Marketing measures
Shopping centre marketing is moving away from broad brand-building campaigns to more measurable PR and digital advertising, along with sales-driven tactical promotions. In this article, which first appeared in Centre Retailing 2011, Alan Thornton of Madisonsoho explores the move to more measurable marketing approaches and reviews some of our clients’ campaigns that have really measured up in terms of a marketing return.
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Looking back over the last 25 years, it is not only our high
streets that have changed radically but also shoppers - in their
expectations, lifestlyes and social preoccupations. Marketing
managers are faced with more options and challenges than ever
before. And a recent tightening of budgets has put their
efforts to identify the most cost effective approach under an
intense spotlight from landlords, asset managers and retailers.
Marketing was much more certain a few decades ago. Mass
audiences consumed the same mass media, and shopping centre
marketing was in its infancy. Promotions promised fashion
shows, "family fun" and Christmas festivities.
Jump forward to now and the world is rather different. Old
certainties surrounding shoppers have fragmented. The mum,
dad and 2.4 kids of the OXO family have been supplanted by a new
social phenomenon which futurologists call "generation
Jones". This is a more dynamic group, where family life
expands at the weekends to incorporate grandparents and kids from
different marriages.
Old-style categorisations such as the ABC1 social class
breakdown are now supplanted by more diverse categorisations coined
by brands such as Acorn and Mosaic. Retailers are adept at
using such analysis to get under the skin of their target
audiences.
For example, historically, Topshop would see its target shopper
as a fashionable 18 year-old. Part of its success of the past
15 years has been based on its recognition that what is critical is
not a shopper's actual age, but the fact that the consumer has the
mindset of an 18 year-old.
So the brand manages to appeal simultaneously to a 15 year-old
desperate to be 18, and to a 30 year-old who wishes she still
was.
Shopping centres were late to arrive at such a subtle
understanding of their markets. Many still follow a catch-all
marketing strategy that targets, say, "women aged 18-55 with or
without children, working and non-working". This often leads
to bland and ineffective marketing.
As a test, look at the marketing of any shopping centre close to
you. If you could lift off the brand name and substitute
another without making a difference, the ad is probably failing to
hit home as strongly as it should.
Similarly, if the ad offers "something for everyone", there is
potentially scope to challenge the strategic insight underlying the
campaign. But centre marketing managers are gradually waking
up to the subtleties of segmentation. Fill in your details on
a shopping centre website, for example, and you may be prompted to
tick your interests or state whether you have children. Top
centres will often then issue tailored messages, based on consumer
preferences.
Many scheme, however, email a "something for everyone"
newsletter to the full list, whether their targets are comfortably
retired or a fashion obsessed teenager.
Much more effective is a campaign that creates in the consumer a
conscious or unconscious engagement with the brand - a feeling that
it "understands them". Retailers such as John Lewis and Apple
thrive on this mutual understanding. While it appears
effortless, these most successful brands are usually linked to a
strong and effective customer service. Such an approach is
shown in developer Bride Hall's recent award-winning rebranding of
three shopping centres acquired from The Mall
Corporation.
The Mall followed an emphatic corporate approach across all
three centres, but Bride Hall's research identified a consumer
desire to reclaim a local sensibility and revert to the original
centre names. Creative approaches were developed for all
three, geared to local audiences: a fashion focus in Chester, a
family direction in Epsom, and a multicultural aspect in
Edgware.
Footfall, sales, PR and surveys showed an immediate upsurge in
shopper response.
The key factor influencing most modern marketing campaigns has
to be accountability. Marketing budgets are often an easy
target for cuts, and the challenge for marketers is to present a
measurable argument to back up their marketing plan. If there
is a choice between refurbishing a lift, for example, or rebranding
a shopping centre, the argument for the rebrand could be a lot more
difficult to articulate, yet the need may be equally pressing.
The digital challenge
Economic and cultural fragmentation has coincided with an
explosion in ways to target people through marketing messages, with
multi-channel TV, a radio landscape in a state of flux, and the
dominance of digital media from a standing start. Digital
media now accounts for 23% of all advertising revenue.
To reach 50million people radio took 38 years, TV took 13 years
but Facebook managed it in a mere 9 months!
There has been a stampeded into web advertising and social
media. Some shopping centres have full time employees
dedicated to updating Facebook and Twitter accounts. Digital
channels bring as many opportunities as pitfalls.
Pay-per-click advertising has an advantage in that a shopping
centre is able to buy "eyeballs" rather than just media space that
may go unread. A marketing manager can now profile the third
party websites on which the centre's ad will appear and, with the
help of geodemographics, profile the ad's users.
The rate at which the ads pop up can be capped to ensure
that the campaign stays within budget parameters. The hit
rate can then easily be measured to establish if the right
audience responded in sufficient numbers.
However, the way that people consume media can be very different
from how they view advertising. Can you recall the ad you saw
when you logged onto your Hotmail or Facebook account?
Standing out creatively is as necessary as relevance.
Search engine optimisation techniques are also a key ingredient
in the digital marketing mix. Key search words can be
bought to ensure that a centre gains prominence near the top of
Google's all important search criteria. For example,
Broadwalk in Edgware would be sensible to use key words such as
"shopping", "centre", "north London" and "Broadwalk", but it could
also be cunning and add the names of nearby rival centres.
Relevance is vital however. Habitat scored an own goal on
a recent campaign when it latched onto highly used search terms
such as "Iraq", "Afghanistan" and "war". Web users looking
for news stories were bemused and annoyed to hit on a link to a
special offer on homewares. Not only did this fail to
increase sales, it became a major negative talking point on social
media channels. Big opportunities in digital are often
twinned with big pitfalls.
How can a centre weave a steady course through this new digital
environment? A multi-channel media approach can often be the
most effective.
For example, SouthGate Bath wanted to boost registrations on its
website and increase use of its car park. It bought access to
a regional issue of The Daily Mail in the Bath area and stuck on
every television page a yellow post-it note with a free parking
voucher. Readers had to log on to receive the discount.
The uptake was instant, substantial and fully measurable, as the
car park reached full capacity for the first time shortly
after. The promotion resulted in a record number of website
hits, and the mailing lists doubled in size.
Events and promotions have shown huge improvements in quality,
with companies such as Fashion Live bringing TV show standards to
fashion show production. However, many are run with tired
regularity.
Once centre that did challenge the inevitability of its annual
events calendar was Drake Circus in Plymouth. Squeezed
budgets forced a choice between market research and the events
programme, so the centre chose to axe all its events. The
result? Absolutely no difference in sales turnover.
The centre has since reintroduced a single, targeted student
event that costs only £500. This uses Facebook and data
capture competition mechanics to provide a direct measure of
success, and a tiny outlay has led to £80,000 in additional retail
sales.
On the flip side, when Centre Court in Wimbledon increased the
number and quality of its fashion events, it saw a direct
correlation between the promotion and tenants' sales. Here,
the key justification was the relevance of the event programme, as
the entire strategy was built around a fashion message. The
fashion shows were woven directly into the strategy rather than run
just for their own sake.
Holiday promotion
X-Leisure followed a similar approach at its leisure
destinations, the Xscape centres. Identifying that many
visitors would be delaying overseas holidays because of the
economic downturn, it developed the "Ultimate Package Holiday"
promotion as an anchor to its entire summer events programme.
Visitors registered for a "passport" that gave them access to a
"beach" at the centre and a host of activities throughout the
summer. X-Leisure spread the cost across a range of centres,
and used mechanisms that allowed a direct measure of the event's
effectiveness and return on investment. Two of the
three schemes went on to register their highest ever footfall.
Probably the biggest shift in approach is the more active link
with retailers. Brand-building campaigns have since scaled
back in preference to a tighter focus on local
audiences. This sales-promotion approach is paying
dividends by visibly driving shoppers' cash into retailers'
tills.
The dilemma faced by Drake Circus is increasingly typical in the
shopping centre market. While the scheme in Plymouth held
onto its research budget, for an increasing number of centres it is
research that tops the list when the axe falls.
Research and brand-scaping specialist Karl Kalcher has called
this "strategic schizophrenia", highlighting the contradiction
whereby landlords demand more measurability but cut the very means
of achieving it.
Kalcher believes the reason many landlords and developers have
become more sceptical about research is less about the cost and
more about the fact that the findings often provide limited or no
direction for marketers or asset managers.
With his MindFolio team, Kalcher has devised a response to this
in the form of Core15, a research programme that shifts the focus
onto the analysis and interpretation of the data. They aim to
produce something that is valued, constantly referred to, and forms
an integral part of a centre's strategy.
With the fundamental changes of the past few decades, the
measurement of results has never been more critical. Over the
coming years, developments in technology and the ability to gain a
better understanding of shoppers will, hopefully, help to make
exceptional marketing even more cost-effective.