With smaller marketing budgets becoming more prevalent, how can shopping centres make the case to potential advertisers? Hannah Prevett investigates
With footfall declining as a symptom of the deepening recession, shopping centres are being forced to get creative to encourage people to keep advertising. Technology is also changing the way brands communicate with their target audiences, but which media are proving most successful in the mall environment?
What you have to remember, says Eileen Connolly head of retail marketing at property consultancy DTZ, is that the poster industry has “done very well from the shopping centre industry, with internal and external panels, whether they be static or digital.” As a result, Connolly says advertisers will continue to want to pitch their wares to shopping mall customers in the UK.
“You have to ensure that you don’t undersell the value of the customers,” explains Connolly. Advertising to customers in shopping centres has a unique value – their very presence in the mall indicates that they are already inclined to spend. “The poster contractor is actually getting space right in front of people who already have a propensity to spend.”
As a result, Connolly certainly doesn’t think that the market for advertising space in shopping centres is something that will disappear anytime soon. Andrew Keiller, sales director at Brandspace, is cautiously optimistic; while brand spend has remained “remarkably buoyant” up until now, he admits he is “slightly concerned” for 2009.
While the market won’t disappear entirely, there are tactics malls can employ to ensure that their advertising sales don’t slump. The first rule is to be creative: in order to engage a client’s attention, the same old pitch might not do the trick. “We are definitely being more creative, and we’re packaging more now,” says Keiller. “Part of the creativity I think is selling void units – there are a lot of them at the moment – and shopping centres pay rates on empty shops so it’s in their interest for us to try and fill them, whether it’s a car launch or an advertising hoarding on the front of the empty unit.”
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"You have to ensure you don't undersell the value of the customers" |
Rule number two, according to Connolly, is to make sure projects are professionally done. Panels should be strategically placed and should not disrupt the flow of the mall. Also, one of the most “clever” things malls can do, reckons Connolly, is make sure technology is up-to-date. For her, digital advertising is the way forward. “I think particularly young consumers are far more used to digital moving or audio driven advertising. When you look at ipods, iphones, downloads, laptops, portable web access, a static poster has to be very clever to do anything more than what you can get from a digital platform.”
Meanwhile, Keiller isn’t so sure, pointing out a number of digital media agencies that have struggled in recent times. Notably, Screen FX, has been through corporate restructurings and has since rebranded as Mall FX. It cannot be denied that the technology is incredibly powerful and is no doubt a force to be reckoned with. It may just take a little while for consumers and malls themselves to be convinced.
Connolly points out that in modern, high tech mall environments, implementing digital advertising screens is not too much of a problem. But for more mature malls, the digital platform will need to be fitted retrospectively, causing chaos with legacy systems. “The clever solutions will be those that accommodate the hundreds of middle aged shopping centres,” concludes Connolly.
