Budget stretcher
Published: 17 July, 2008
In these hard times it is becoming increasingly vital for shopping centres to stretch their marketing budgets to achieve as much coverage as possible for minimum expenditure.
PMW Communications has a knack of coming up with creative and innovative ideas, some more outrageous than others. Its campaigns at The Plaza, Oxford Street, have proved successful and low cost.
"Due to The Plaza's location, we were dealing with the London community and could afford to be a bit more experimental," says PMW managing director Peter Sutton.
PMW has staged two nights of naked shopping, given 25 per cent discount to all ginger-haired people, played 'Real Life Spot the Difference' with the Big Brother twins and launched 'Bellyvision' and 'Cheeky Advertising', where models' stomachs and bare bottoms were used as advertising space. "Creativity does not need to be expensive," says Sutton. "If we take Bellyvision as an example, all that is needed is a model and a body painter. When we launched it, the story ran across the world and gained coverage as far off as Israel and Japan. In total it generated a phenomenal £1.6m worth of media coverage, excluding web coverage."
Toolbox Marketing's creative director Michelle Daniels points out that with stock photography costs rising, a library of relevant, up-to-date and bespoke photos is vital. And she insists there is no need to sacrifice vast chunks of budget for a photo shoot so long as the centre manager has a mind for it and the marketing team a suitably creative bent.
Toolbox's managing director Michelle Buxton says: "We do the seasonal fashion shoots, and while we have the models there we use different styles of photography to deliver different messages but using the same photographer. So it works really well." In addition, some shopping centres share the expenses with other centres within their portfolio.
"So long as you are selling an experience as opposed to a specific product and are prepared to plan ahead, it's possible to cover up to a year's photography requirements in one shoot," adds Daniels.
