Shopping Centre
Purple prizes
This year's BCSC Purple Apple Awards highlighted the most successful shopping centre marketing schemes
Published:  19 May, 2008
Page 3 

Six shopping centres across the UK were celebrating this month after being awarded the coveted Purple Apple gong at this year's BCSC Purple Apple Marketing Awards.

Brent Cross, Meadowhall, Slough's QueensmereObservatory, The Chimes in Uxbridge and The Gate, Newcastle each won a Purple Apple, while Westfield Derby won two. The event, hosted by comedian Michael McIntyre and attended by 650 guests, also saw 26 Purple Apple Merits and two Purple Apple Pips awarded.

Westfield Derby was the biggest winner of the night with two Purple Apple awards. The first was for the mall's launch event in the Best Single Event category.

From 9 October 2007, Westfield Derby gave shoppers three sensational days of dance performance, with stars of BBC's Strictly Come Dancing performing on stages across the centre. More than 150,000 customers were present on launch day and 800,000 shoppers witnessed the events across launch week.

The second award, under the Strategic/Overall Marketing category, was for the Westfield Derby consumer marketing launch, which positioned the scheme as a 'dramatically different' shopping experience in the East Midlands, via an integrated campaign using PR, events, advertising and digital marketing.

Brent Cross received a Purple Apple award for its 6 Million+ event to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27 - the first such event to be held in a UK mall.

The event achieved, or over-achieved, on all its targets. This included achieving £33,500 worth of PR coverage - £28,500 over target - and outperforming the national average for footfall by 1 per cent.

Meadowhall won a Purple Apple under the Strategic/Overall category for its 'Wow - Bigger, Brighter and Better Meadowhall' campaign to aid business recovery following the floods in June last year, which saw 41 per cent of the centre's stores closed. Launching in October, the 'Double Take' celebrity look-a-like event, involving the stores and the public, celebrated the completion of a major refurbishment and extension programme and visitor numbers increased by 2.3 per cent year-on-year in October and November, beating expectations.

'Join The Fashion Journey' at The Chimes also won the Uxbridge centre a Purple Apple in the Strategic/Overall Marketing category. The innovative campaign highlighted the strong fashion offer at The Chimes whilst specifically targeting the urban intelligence Mosaic group. The campaign identified six individual fashion styles which were given their own brand identity, personality and theme, and each promoted specific retailers and highlighted key products for the coming season. As a result, the mall met its objective to increase urban intelligence visits to the centre by 2 per cent versus 2006.

Purple Apple winner of the Electronic Communications category was QueensmereObservatory with its 'Wish & Win' promotion.

To reach the ever increasing multi-ethnic community in Slough, the scheme developed a unique web communication strategy to enable shoppers to communicate with friends and family worldwide. Shoppers were invited to send instant and interactive festive wishes via the internet, free of charge. The promotion increased awareness of the centre and its website, reached out to all shoppers and captured data.

'A Great Night Out is a Gate Night Out' won The Gate a Purple Apple in the Effective Advertising category.

Research indicated that a bold new approach to advertising was needed if it was to maintain its position as Newcastle's premier entertainment venue. A daring strategy was launched involving the use of unbranded cartoon strips, which were also translated into radio advertisements.



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