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Decking the malls

November 30, 2015

Every year parents dress children in their holiday best and drive over to the mall for shopping and that annual Christmas photo taken with Santa. Some of the trends and technologies surrounding the holidays have changed, of course. What has stayed the same is people’s fondness for that venerable, white-bearded old gent — and their hopes of being able to re-create some of the holiday memories they have known for their children.

“We all grew up going to the shopping center and having our photo taken with Santa,” said Ashlyn W. Booth, CMD, a Houston-based vice president and regional marketing manager at JLL. Thus Santa Claus remains a focal point of many a shopping center holiday campaign and display. In planning for their malls’ displays, marketing executives everywhere say they aim to capture the nostalgic, anticipatory spirit a visit with Santa traditionally brings, while also offering up interactive activities that keep the children engaged — and the parents free to scan coupons and sales promotions on iPhones and in stores.

To engage shoppers in the holiday spirit, the JLL marketing team ran an award-winning promotion last year titled, “Be a part of the JOY.” Shoppers were invited to pose as the letter Y, next to large, 3-D cutouts of the letters J and O, and to post their photos online. The campaign boosted online engagement by 40 percent in November and December, relative to the rest of the year, JLL executives say. “After that, we thought: Where can we go now? How can we possibly top that?” recalled Booth. 

They looked to Santa for inspiration. “We thought: How can we expand upon the Santa experience, and make it more interactive, more fun?” said Beth Faulkner, another JLL vice president of marketing. The solution, at least in part, was to digitize the moment. This year, after their pose with Santa, customers can go online and digitally alter the photos with stickers and borders. They are encouraged to share the photos online, but they also have the option of printing out physical copies of the photos to use as holiday cards. All JLL centers have Shutterfly gift cards included in their holiday packages.

For anyone seeking photos with characters other than Santa, JLL will be offering photo opportunities with various cutout displays, including a naughty elf, a nice elf, and an “ugly sweater.” Customers can pose with these characters and post online with custom hashtags to win weekly prizes. “Santa is a big driver of traffic — that’s why we’re so focused on it,” said Faulkner. “But we also wanted options for families with children who were looking for a different interactive experience.”

Santa Claus is the focus also of DreamWorks Animations’ 3-D display, called DreamPlace. Introduced last year at seven General Growth Properties and Forest City Enterprises shopping centers, DreamPlace is a virtual, reimagining of the North Pole featuring a 2,000-square-foot, Bavarian-style cottage covered with digital LED screens. Each screen features animated scenes of Santa’s Village, where DreamWorks characters like Shrek and Fiona work and play. This year when guests step into the entry room of DreamPlace, they will be greeted with the news that Santa has gone missing. They will then be tasked with finding him by steering through a virtual obstacle course. Not to ruin the adventure, but sources say that Santa will, in fact, reappear and the trip through DreamPlace will be capped with a real-life private visit and photo opportunity with the jolly old man.

The display will be installed at 14 shopping centers this year, including Fashion Show Mall, in Las Vegas; Victoria Gardens, in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. — where the Forest City marketing team is excited to have the display back for a second year — and Westfield London. “It was a big driver to our centers,” said Jessi Fausett, vice president of marketing at Forest City Enterprises. “We did a survey after the experience, and it showed that people were more likely to come back to our mall, because they had such a great experience.” 

Those are the very sorts of connections and effects Taubman seeks in working with 20th Century Fox to bring a Peanuts-themed interactive “Ice Palace” to ten of its shopping centers this year. These displays feature a 30-foot dome complete with falling snow and which is populated with lifelike representations of Charlie Brown and Lucy. Guests may watch a light show and have a photo taken with Santa. “These lovable characters are synonymous with the holidays, and what better way to bring them to life than through this memorable experience?” said Glenda Cole, Taubman’s vice president of marketing and sponsorship. 

Elsewhere around the globe, shopping centers are running similar holiday activities. At the Menlyn Park Shopping Centre, in Pretoria, South Africa, shoppers will get the chance to experience “Christmas in Paris.” Children can test out their baking skills at a pop-up French patisserie and paint “Monet inspired” canvases at the art corner, while their parents who utilize the mall’s personalized gift wrapping services will be entered to win an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris. “Christmas in Paris is cold and frosty, making the city of love even more romantic during this time,” said Andrea De Wit, Menlyn Park Shopping Centre’s marketing manager. “Menlyn Park’s promotion is about bringing some of the winter Christmas romance into a typically warm South African Christmas.”

At the Wijnegem Shopping Center, in Belgium, marketers will continue running their award-winning, interactive, LED Christmas tree display this year. The promotion centers around a large-scale Christmas tree integrated with 18 digital screens shaped like Christmas ornaments. For the past two years, shoppers have been encouraged to upload photos of themselves onto the shopping center’s website. Throughout the holiday season, pictures of customers loop continually on those ornament-shaped screens. Visitors ogle the tree and are encouraged to visit Santa’s house, located, conveniently, right next to the display.

In the end, the most successful of these promotions will be those that make experiences and events leading to the best dinner-party conversations later on. As JLL’s Faulkner noted, in competing for customers, “you can’t win on stores anymore. If you have five malls in one market, chances are the [store] mixes are going to be close. …What’s going to separate you is someone leaving [and] saying, ‘I went to xyz shopping center, and my daughter had this happen!’ The story that follows that exclamation point is what every center is hoping to create.”