The Gold award was for its community-orientated Chatsworth Centre campaign and the Silver awards for Gateway Theatre of Shopping, Musgrave Centre, Menlyn Park Shopping Centre and Cavendish Square Shopping Centre.
The Chatsworth Centre campaign tapped into the ability of a mall to serve as a custodian of the community and utilised a sophisticated approach to branding the centre, by positioning it as a retail destination that cares about its patrons - a welcome departure from the 'hard sell' retail campaigns that tend to dominate this sector.
It centred on its location in the heart of a community that has been ravaged by the popular drug 'Sugars'. As a corporate entrenched in the community and concerned about the youth who are also its future shoppers, the centre identified the need to talk to primary school children in the community.
"Following extensive research and brainstorming, our marketing team came up with the idea of creating a comic book - 'Sugars - The Bitter Truth' - that addressed the serious effects of the drug in the community, especially amongst the youth," explains Primedia Lifestyle MD, Doug Mayne.
The campaign achieved numerous breakthroughs, not least of which was a post-campaign survey, which found that 92% of respondents felt the comic had helped educate them.
A silver award was given for its campaign on the recent revamp of Durban's Musgrave centre. Once the bastion of high end, luxury shopping, the mall decided to revitalise its advertising activity on the back of a major physical renovation.
The 'Accentuate an Icon' campaign was developed to re-establish market share and achieved increases in foot traffic increased of 6%, 11% and 12% respectively, during the three month campaign period (Oct - Dec 2011). Tenant turnover also grew by 24%, 11% and 17% in the same period.
The Primedia Lifestyle campaign for Durban based centre Gateway Theatre of Shopping also received Silver recognition. The centre's marketing team devised a fully integrated strategy including a life changing competition, a strategic focus on the mall's accomplishments and celebratory events.
Spend per head targets were reached with an increase of 11% in August 2011 alone and a foot count increase of 155 435 additional visitors or 2.63%.
The third silver award was for the Menlyn Park Shopping Centre for its 'The Beach Is Back 2011!' campaign that stemmed from the realisation that not all shoppers could afford their usual coastal holidays.
The aim was to attract 5 000 kids to the beach as compared to the 2 981 kids in 2010 and thus increase the overall foot count to the centre during a 43 day period. The campaign proved highly successful with 8 282 kids enjoying the beach activities, 3 282 (34%) kids more than the objective of 5 000. This was also 64% higher than 2010 and that despite eight days of rain.
The overall 2011 December foot count was 2 088 869 which represented a 7% increase over the 2010 figure of 1 945 482 and 4 542 names were added to the mall's customer database, boosting longer-term CRM activities.
The fourth silver award for Cavendish Square in Cape Town leveraged the campaign's topical tie up with the two Royal Weddings that were held during 2011. The aim of the campaign was to counter the 5% average drop in trading densities during the winter season (April to August) at Cavendish Square.
The campaign had three focus areas: A number of events focusing on food and flowers, which are synonymous with weddings; two creative, tactical 'Princess' projects to uplift young girls and the annual Cavendish Square Winter Sale
The campaign proved a major success with the centre's turnover increasing 2% year on year (April - Aug 2011) and trading densities increasing by 9% year on year (May-Aug 2011).
The ICSC Solal Marketing Awards bring together the finest retail marketing initiatives across Europe and South Africa. This year a total of 105 nominations were received from shopping centres across a range of European countries, with 9 Gold, 33 Silver and 2 Special Distinction for Social Media awards being given this year.
