The Great Outdoors
By Graham Parker | Published: 01 February, 2010
As shopping centres fight to distinguish themselves from one another, Christmas activities have grown bigger and better. The traditional Santa’s grotto is being replaced with food markets, ice rinks, and in some cases even castles. But even the most spacious mall couldn’t house an expansive winter wonderland, so centres are switching to outdoor spaces for their festive offerings.
One such centre is the eminent Liverpool One, which no longer has a plain old grotto but Santa’s Ice Palace. “That says it all really,” says marketing director Lisa Tolley, who started on 2009’s Christmas scheme in the middle of last year. “The tendering process began in the summer, and LDJ came up with the idea of a magical ice palace which incorporated Liverpool’s Go Penguins event.”
Go Penguins, commissioned by Liverpool City Council as part of the Year of the Environment, comprised 150 individually designed penguin models scattered across the city. The scheme was designed to raise awareness of global warming, so naturally Tolley wanted Liverpool One to get involved. The Ice Palace was an ideal platform: nine handcrafted penguins found their way inside.
“It worked really well,” comments Tolley. “We wanted to give people something to look at while they were queuing to go inside, so we had penguins looking out through the glass windows. There was also a mail box where children could drop off their letter to Santa, and a conveyer belt to take the mail to the North Pole.”
Inside the grotto itself, a costumed Father Christmas sat on a throne surrounding by hanging icicles, (and a carefully positioned partition allowed the centre to get away with two Santas). Having taken so long to plan and a week to construct, Tolley wanted to make the most of the Ice Palace’s opening day.
“We had the option of hiding it and then doing a big reveal, but we thought why not use sound instead? Rather covering it up during construction, we used speakers to make it sound like elves were working on the palace, getting it ready for Christmas. It got children excited in the build up, and we kept a local feel by having the elves address people walking past. So they’d say things like, ‘Johnny’s been a very good boy this year!’”
Each aspect of the grotto was carefully planned and carried out, from setting up an indoor queuing area to keep children out of the cold, to top quality costumes provided by the grotto management team at Melbry Events. “The costumes were amazing; it was fantastic to know it was all in good hands,” adds Tolley. And most importantly, the children loved it. The number of visitors to Santa’s Ice Palace shot up 75 per cent compared to 2008, with locals and people coming from further afield to enjoy the experience.
“The palace created a certain ambience around the entire centre,” Tolley observes. “It sat at the end of our main street – Paradise Street – and twinkled in the evening, with traditional Christmas songs being played from the speakers.”
But it didn’t stop there. Aside from Santa’s Ice Palace, a 60-metre big wheel was set up in Liverpool One’s five-acre Chavasse Park. The park itself sits on a car park 20 metres above ground, offering unparalleled views of the city from a height of 80 metres.
Add to this a traditional Christmas market, 3D mini-show, choir singers and other festive entertainment, and it’s hardly surprising that like-for-like Christmas footfall was up almost 30 per cent on 2008. “We’ve got a brand to uphold at Liverpool One, and every Christmas event was designed to enhance the consumer experience,” Tolley explains. “As they walked into the Ice Palace, the children’s faces lit up – it was fantastic to watch. There was something for everyone and it was just great fun.”
Meanwhile down in the South West, The Mall at Cribbs Causeway was upholding its own reputation as a premiere shopping destination. On 12 November, the centre opened a Winter Wonderland to provide a range of activities for visitors.
As with Liverpool One’s big wheel – the first ever wheel to operate in the city – the marketing team at Cribbs used a unique selling point to attract visitors. Maria Crayton, head of marketing for The Mall at Cribbs Causeway, says: “The Wonderland opened with a traditional Christmas market, Santa’s magical castle and a 1,000-sq m ice rink – the largest outdoor rink in the south west and the only one in Bristol.”
Just as shopping centre commercialisation and marketing are becoming more about the ‘experience,’ centres are investing time and funds into unique, high quality Christmas events. Never-before-seen views of a major city, or the region’s largest outdoor ice rink, provide an experience that decade-old grottos and straggly bits of tinsel couldn’t hope to match.
“To celebrate Christmas 2009, we devised a number of marketing initiatives helping to increase footfall at the centre for the key festive trading period,” explains Crayton, and the success of The Mall’s initiatives were obvious. Despite running for the last six years, the Winter Wonderland continues to draw in huge numbers of families from across the region.
“November and December saw increased footfall to the centre, and healthy revenue in ticket sales from both ice skating and Santa’s castle,” adds Crayton. “Castle ticket sales were up by nine per cent year-on–year; and sales of ice skating tickets up by seven per cent with more than 50,000 skaters taking to the ice.”
The quality of Cribbs Causeway’s multiple offerings has attracted many new visitors over the years, as well as ensuring each visitor returns next Christmas with family and friends. But new initiatives are constantly in the making, keeping things fresh. In 2009, the marketing team launched a new initiative called ‘Skate and Donate,’ which reached out to vulnerable people and firmly secured The Mall’s place within the community.
“The Mall donated certain skating sessions to charities, allowing skaters to offer the cost of their tickets to charity,” Crayton explains. Benefactors included Cancer Research UK and ‘Precious Drops’: a North Bristol Healthcare Trust campaign to launch a milk bank in Bristol for premature babies.
Both Cribbs and Liverpool One held spectacular events to switch on their lights and start the Christmas countdown. At the Mall, Father Christmas rode up through heaving crowds in a traditional sleigh pulled by reindeer. Children were allowed to pet the animals while Santa opened up his castle for the coming weeks.
Meanwhile in Liverpool, traditional festive characters walked down a red carpet flanked by paparazzi. Candy canes on stilts, presents and Christmas puddings took their turn down the carpet and into the Ice Palace, with the star of the night – Santa himself – appearing at the end.
The switch-on is a major event in most centres, often drawing in hundreds or even thousands of people. But for Liverpool One and Cribbs Causeway, it was the quality, the meticulous planning, and the unique sense of experience that held the attention of so many, long after opening night.
