Situation
Up to a point, it pays to advertise….unless, like Honey Creek Mall, you already have the reach to attract nearly three-fourths of the people in your market area at least once a month. At that point it’s time to think about exploring new channels of communication that can increase the frequency of visits and the amount of sales.

A market survey done last year by Honey Creek Mall confirmed with emphasis what the mall’s managers already knew: that Honey Creek Mall is a powerful retail draw for the nine counties of the Wabash Valley (west central Indiana and east central Illinois). Mall manager Kim Ingalsbe said of the results, “We were astounded to find out that 97% of the population had visited the mall at one time or another.”

The mall’s research showed that customers want their regional mall to be more than just a shopping center. They expect an entertaining experience and family oriented activities. They are Internet-savvy and will read e-messages from the mall.

Honey Creek Mall is by far the largest retail center in the area, but faces local competition from the super stores and several strip malls whose tenants attract one of the mall’s targeted demographics, persons under 25. Some shoppers, many of them in the mall’s older targeted demographic, are attracted to Indianapolis, just 60 miles away, for their shopping needs.

Problem
“People know where the mall is, they know our stores, and much of the time they make us their first choice for retail,” Ingalsbe said. “But we needed help to think outside the ‘marketing box,’ and achieve the business goals of the mall’s management company, Faison.” Ingalsbe said those goals are to move aggressively to continue to grow sales and maintain market dominance, and include creating a new image/brand, increasing sales per square foot, increasing sales in the food court and building additional sources of revenue.

Solution
To help, mall management brought in its marketing firm, MillerWhite LLC, as a strategic partner. MillerWhite proposed a detailed data analysis and integrated marketing plan. Bill White, a partner in the firm, said, “After we defined the mall’s business goals and analyzed the research, we put together an initial two-year marketing plan that proposed marketing goals, objectives, strategies and tactics that were new to the mall.”

• Creating a new image/brand
  Through an exercise called ‘Unlocking the Power of Your Pledge^SM,’ MillerWhite helped the mall’s managers develop a pledge that in turn led to the creation of a new tagline, jingle and creative direction. The pledge exercise asks several questions about the company’s benefits, customers and competition, then analyzes the responses and comes up with the pledge, which is a statement of the client’s unique selling point(s) and what sets it apart from its competition.
  
  The pledge that emerged for the mall was, “Honey Creek Mall pledges to make each shopper’s visit an experience that is entertaining, family oriented and one-of-a-kind,” and the tagline that was created was “It’s All About You.” That new brand/image became a part of all the mall’s marketing.
  


• Increasing sales per square foot
  This objective targeted the mall’s frequent shoppers, its not-so-frequent shoppers (which included people over 50 and those under 25) and potential tenants as well. MillerWhite focused on the mall’s web site as the message outlet for many of its strategies to support getting more people to visit the mall, getting current customers to visit more often and getting them to increase the amount of their purchases. A web site audit and resulting re-vamp added maps and bus routes for older customers and students, as well as a popular job listings page.
  
  With the mall, MillerWhite developed the on-line MeClub and an e-newsletter for frequent shoppers. The e-newsletter offers shoppers store specials and other features to encourage them to come in more often and spend more when they do come in. Periodic e-mails to MeClub members offer an incentive for every new member they get to register. All marketing efforts, even traditional advertising messages, are now designed to drive traffic to the web site and get people to sign up for the MeClub.
  


• Increasing food court sales
  The mall established a community room and offers more activities through the mall’s kids club for the younger and family audience. A Raggs Birthday Palace was built in the food court where children can celebrate their birthdays with a special party package and an appearance by Raggs, the mall’s dog mascot. The Raggs Kids Club holds several members-only parties during the year in the food court. The community room is available for special activities of civic groups, schools, the mall itself and mall partners. In September, the mall started a Lunch & Learn series that encourages customers to grab lunch at the food court and attend a craft lesson or other seminar.
  


• Building additional revenue
  In light of the mall’s popularity, MillerWhite developed several 12-ft. by 4-ft., free-standing, eye-level indoor billboards that would be attractive as an advertising medium for businesses outside the mall because of the large number of people who come to the mall to shop. Businesses buying space on the billboards become preferred partners with the mall and have the benefit of using the community room free of charge, along with the potential of reaching nearly half a million people a month with their advertising message.
  

Result
Implementation of the marketing plan has definitely paid off, White said. “In the plan’s first year, our goal was to increase sales-per-square-foot by 2%. We beat that with an actual increase in sales-per-square-foot of 5%.”

As implementation of the mall’s marketing plan was getting under way in 2002, retail nationally was suffering its weakest holiday shopping season since 1970. Figures reported by the International Council of Shopping Centers showed that overall, department stores during that period suffered a 4.5% drop in same-store sales for 2002 in 50 selected U.S. markets. At Honey Creek Mall however, overall sales during the 2002 holiday season increased 3% over 2001.

Honey Creek Mall hasn’t abandoned traditional advertising and doesn’t intend to. Special events, the kids club and the web site still get airtime on local radio and TV. But with sales continuing to do well and the e-database growing, the fact that mall management and MillerWhite can control, through the Internet, when and what messages are being sent to drive traffic, is seen as an invaluable asset.

“This is an ongoing process,” White said. “We’ve implemented specific integration tactics that have been driven by the mall’s business goals. These are constantly being evaluated as we analyze new data and begin developing the next two-year plan.”

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