‘Tis the season to be giving!

Destination Marketing team reach 1m+ people with Christmas messaging.

Christmas is a time for giving and with an increased social value conscience; more of our landlords are seeking to better serve the communities they are part of. So many of us are even more conscious perhaps at Christmas of people less fortunate than ourselves, and want to contribute to make others’ lives tangibly better – even if just for one moment or day.

This year the Destination Marketing team is running a number of activations across eleven sites and supporting six charities plus schools, foodbanks and hospital wards. Each Christmas activity is carefully tailored to the needs of the individual landlord and the target audience for their asset.

Christmas planning for the team typically begins in the summertime, but our first event to kick off Christmas 2019 took place at mixed use scheme Belgrade Plaza, Coventry in mid-November. Here we manage a family friendly Christmas lights switch on in partnership with a local school. The school are given the chance to perform Christmas songs, which brings a new audience to the Plaza whilst reaching a further 76,000 people via social media promotion.

At Intu’s The Waterfront, Brierley Hill we now operate a regular street food event. For the Christmas event a “reverse foodbank” took place on Friday, guests were encouraged to bring a food item to donate to the local food bank. The event typically attracts around 1000 people and reaches over 100,000 online.

In Brindleyplace, Birmingham the team is combining working with a charity who are also an occupier, Ikon Gallery, to produce a free of charge festive trail that meets local objectives both for the occupier and landlord at a city level raising the profile of the scheme and it links with the arts. Further Christmas activity at Brindleyplace sees one of the estate’s charity partner’s Sense providing live music in the bandstand whilst fundraising. The combined reach of these events is likely to be in the region of 20,000 people.

Putting a spin on “giving” this is also a time our landlords choose to invest in give aways, raising the profile of their estate and reaching larger audiences through paid partnerships with radio stations. On behalf of ARES this year we are running four large scale radio campaigns and giving away prizes totalling a value of £3000. These include giving someone the opportunity to win a £1000 Christmas prize with prizes direct from the retail park. These partnerships running in Derby, Birmingham, Dundee and Gateshead will reach an incredible 791,000 people through radio alone.

At Cannock Shopping Centre the team will be hosting Father Christmas on four occasions in the run up to Christmas. The Father Christmas is free for shoppers to visit but acts as an opportunity to collect donations for charity partner the Donna Louise Hospice. By advertising the event alongside a generic Christmas shopping message, approximately 100,000 people will be reached. For a centre of this size, this is a huge promotion opportunity but also benefits a charity by giving them both profile and fundraising opportunities.

In Walsall another give away will be paired alongside a giving opportunity when our “Selfie Sleigh” hits the town on 4th December. This giant branded sleigh will form part of a competition opportunity and will also support a present donation station for the local children’s ward.

Moving south to business campus Lakeside North Harbour in Portsmouth, a variety of events are being organised for the office community primarily to raise money for charity partner Challenge The Channel. Events include a Christmas jumper day, on site film screenings in their auditorium, Christmas craft markets and choir performances.

In Swinton near Manchester our “12 Days of Christmas” again gifts a variety of prizes and aims to reach around 70,000 people via online promotions.

That’s an incredible reach of over one million people seeing positive messages from sites managed by the Destination Marketing team this Christmas. If you would like to raise the profile of your site at Christmas or need some advice on achieving social value objectives please get in touch with Caroline Pooley or one of the team.