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Large Mall Management Company |
A Mall Management company came to us because their parent company was rolling out a community program for all their malls nationwide, asking for bids online to benefit a heart charity they were sponsoring. The idea was that customers around the country would go online and bid for auction items during a specified period of time.
All bids would benefit the heart fund, and the individual stores in the mall would donate items for the auction. The regional manager’s task was to immediately let the merchants know about the program (in two local malls)-- both to encourage them to participate as potential donors of merchandise, and also to present the program to their customers. The program was to be rolled out the following week, so time was extremely limited. (Typically, merchants don't read all that Mall Management sends them, too busy are they with their own corporate demands.)
Our solution was to create a “Queen of Hearts” Delight Cart that would stroll to each store in the mall, distributing information and tabletop cards wrapped up in gift fashion. All the while, the cart would be playing the tune " If I only had a heart” from the Wizard of Oz. Thus decorating the cart with e-bids information, we designated two Queen of Hearts to accompany the cart and to offer each store manager heart-shaped tarts and giant 3-foot-wide heart balloons to publicize the event. Most importantly, we gave each manager the 'gift' of information. In order to further coax the store managers into reading the information, we hid stickers in some of the packages. If they found a sticker hidden in the pages of their information, there were immediately presented with a stuffed bear, wearing the e-bids button. The result was huge visibility for the program in the malls and information distribution to all the stores in a week’s time. This promotion got written up and included in their Great Marketing ideas for 2001 that was handed out nationwide. |
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