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Shopping Centers Today -> October 2001
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L.A.’S FASHION SQUARE PUTS FOCUS ON SHOPPING
By Donna Mitchell
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| Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks, Calif., trumpets the fact that it offers little else than shopping. |
Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks, Calif., doesn’t try to hide that it offers little else but shopping. On the contrary, it trumpets the fact, and is making it the core of an ongoing marketing campaign dubbed “100% Pure Shopping.”
There is no movie theater, skating rink, carousel or other diversion inside the Los Angeles mall. But the marketing push, launched in June, uses billboards, print ads and direct mail to tell California’s San Fernando Valley area residents that they can accomplish some serious shopping at Fashion Square, with its 130 retail stores and two anchors. Managed by Jones Lang LaSalle of Chicago, the shopping center features the valley’s only Bloomingdale’s.
“We do very well because people come here to buy, and they buy a lot,” said Shana Yao, marketing director for Fashion Square. “What we find is the mall itself is never really crowded. Even during the holidays it is always comfortable.”
Shopping comfortably is what a lot of the mall’s well-heeled patronage likes to do, said Yao. Located within 15 minutes of Hollywood, the Burbank studios and Beverly Hills, the mall’s understated, retail-focused environment attracts enough celebrities that The Los Angeles Times recently called it “the Mall of Fame.”
There are three eateries at the mall, and while that might cast the air of a misnomer on the “100% Pure Shopping” tag line, Yao said it is not a concern. After all, even the most hardened shopper has to eat.
The campaign targets residents in the greater Los Angeles area, said Jan Sheehan, vice president for Phyllis Klein & Associates, the Los Angeles-based public relations firm for Fashion Square. The campaign, created by Atlanta-based advertising firm Current Inc., began with 15,500 pieces of direct-mail offers, said Yao, and that effort will be followed by up to 40,000 more by the end of the holiday season.
Every ad, whether in the newspaper, on billboards or in a direct mailing, shows off the depth of the mall’s retail offerings by positioning them together in unusual ways. For instance, one print ad displays a pile of shirts wrapped in a belt, and resting on a kitchen scale. The copy reads: “The Finest Cuts” over the shirts, “Wrapped to Go” near the belt, and “You’re Worth Your Weight in Style” under the scale. The rest of the ad copy features the names of the retailers depicted in the ad.
Eight different ads make up that series, but on all of them the mall’s new logo appears, featuring a bar code with the words “Fashion Square” underneath substituting for numbers. The print ads appear in The Los Angeles Times and the regional Los Angeles Magazine.
Sheehan noted that it is too early to discern how successful the overall campaign is faring. But she noted that the direct-mail pieces had a fairly good redemption rate of 7%. The mailings offered a $20 gift certificate for customers who purchased at least $250 worth of merchandise at the inline stores. Sheehan said that customers spent an average of $359 during the promotion.
Since the launch of the campaign, Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks has added several new stores. Coldwater Creek, the women’s apparel and accessories store, opened at the end of June; the Discovery Channel Store opened in late July; and fashion retailers J. Jill and J. Crew both opened in October.
 | Current Issue December 2008 |