Visitors to The Mall Ilford might be mistaken for thinking they’ve taken a detour to the South Pole when they come face to face with The Mall Penguins created by three local Ilford primary schools to celebrate Christmas.

Pupils from Highlands Primary, Uphall Primary and Woodlands Junior School worked with a local artist and sculptor to decorate the six feet high Penguins in their school colours.

Penguin Parade at The Mall

The Penguins were constructed using a wooden frame with papier mache and plaster of paris materials before being designed and decorated by five-to-eleven year old pupils at each of the schools during their art classes last month.

The Penguins were unveiled to local media by youngsters from Highlands Primary school alongside The Mall Ilford General Manager, Marc Myers.

Marc Myers, General Manager of The Mall Ilford, said: “We always aim to make this time of year special for all our shoppers and our community – and the idea of bringing the snowy magic of the Pole to life inside The Mall seemed like such a fun idea. Artist Rachel has been fantastic in helping realise the Penguin project, working at the schools with the children and the results are plain to see: just fabulous!”

Each of the Penguins are displayed in different parts of The Mall. BB’s Coffee & Muffins Café and The Mall are running a competition whereby the first 100 people to correctly name the location of each Penguin and the school behind the design will win a delicious, handmade, freshly baked BB’s muffin.

Said Aamer Qayyum, owner of BB’s Ilford café : “We thought this Penguin project was such a great way of letting youngsters’ imaginations run wild that we wanted to get involved. At BB’s we love to support activities in the community and are looking forward to meeting all 100 lucky muffin winners!”

Grappa devised and implemented the Penguin project to help The Mall engage local children and their families, as well as add differentiation to its Christmas entertainment programme. The Penguins create a real talking point inside The Mall, causing shoppers to break their journey to appreciate the children’s creativity, while PR coverage has enabled the centre to increase its media presence at no extra cost.

BBC East Midlands TV reported on Jennifer, a disabled woman from the Beaumont Leys area of Leicester who had been burgled. The thieves stole sentimental jewellery, all manner of valuable household items, as well all her Christmas presents. The woman lives with her thirteen year old daughter, who is also her primary carer. After illness had kept Jennifer in hospital last December, mother and daughter had been looking forward to a family Christmas this year.

Grappa alerted our client Beaumont Shopping, Jennifer’s local shopping centre to her plight and centre staff reacted by donating £1000 to give her family a nice Christmas. Click here to watch the television interview.

This integrated campaign represents a key part of our marketing programme for The Victoria. In the summer, our Pint Sized Parties Festival bucked the downturn in footfall across UK shopping centres by increasing it in The Victoria by 16% on average over a sustained four-week period.

Underpinning the new 2008 Christmas promotions is a carefully targeted campaign to position The Victoria as ‘the place to meet.’ Click Essex FM, Victoria Campaign to listen to radio advertising, or scroll down to view a thumbnail of specifically targeting families and children, which is running in magazines and local newspapers.

Using The Mall’s brand guidelines, the result is a stylish Christmas campaign aimed at 18-35 year olds that started running in November in local media such as (click to view creative) The Ilford Recorder  and takes in direct mail, online and radio.

Our creative campaign is running across outdoor, press and online throughout December to drive footfall. Click here to view online creative.

The programme was built around a photographic commission set by West 12 to students aged 15 – 16 years, which we succeeded in embedding into the school’s curriculum. Between 2005 – 2008, students worked on different briefs, each resulting in the design and production of a calendar that is distributed through the community.

The programme won Best Community Relations Award at the BCSC Purple Apple Awards for the profound impact it has had upon the lives of young people involved and the relations established between West 12 and its retailers and Phoenix High School, its students and the broader community. 

Commented Marlene Spencer at Phoenix High School: “The first brief of ‘Life on the Green’, allowed the students to consider the community within which they live. The students completed pre-production work and researched potential locations before embarking on the shoot. This required independent learning skills as well as research and group work.

“Whilst on the shoot the students then had the opportunity of amending their original plans and seeking photo opportunities by engaging with members of the public. This activity provided the school with the opportunity to improve its public image and the students were able to act as ambassadors, setting excellent examples of the maturity and creativity which the teachers see on a regular basis.

“The second brief of ‘Inspirations and Aspirations’ for the 2007 calendar allowed the students to be reflective. With the public and the shopping centre in mind they were able to find many good examples of inspirations and consider their aspirations as they progress through their education.

“The experience provided a boost to the students’ self esteem and increased the desire for a number to pursue photography as a potential career pathway. A real bonus was that it also highlighted other professions such as marketing, retail, leisure industry and print, as they could see the project through from initial brief to production.”

Key outcomes achieved by the CSR programme include:

• Photography being introduced into the Curriculum at GCSE level (previously it was just at GNVQ). This is a major success story for Phoenix.
• Inspiring students to create their own magazine with photography at its core.
• Engaging all students in the projects over all three years, negating absenteeism.
• The creation of a highly credible, creative calendar that promotes West 12 throughout the year to its catchment.
• High level retailer engagement at West 12 with major retailers including Boots, Rileys, VUE commenting that the calendar ‘exceeded their expectations’.

The National Museum of Science and Industry (NMSI), which combines the Science Museum, National Railway Museum and Museum of Photography, Film and Television brought together its collections and artefacts to create a vast online resource - www.ingenious.org.uk. Grappa’s task was to launch the new site in the media and raise awareness for its content across a broad target audience. 

Our objective was to secure features and news in the nationals and relevant specialist or enthusiast magazines. The website was funded by the Lottery-backed New Opportunities Fund, which stipulated that a physical launch should take place prior to the site going live, so it was important to make sure this was a success and it was also crucial to position the role of NMSI and the three constituent museums correctly. 

Our strategy was to embargo coverage until the launch date, but provide information to the media in advance in order to create understanding and interest, as well as set up appropriate editorial opportunities.

Once the launch date was set, we worked closely with the in-house PR team at the Science Museum to prepare succinct and informative press kits tailored to each target market. We selected appropriate ‘threads’ from the web site and highlighted these to editors demonstrating the breadth of subject matter on www.ingenious.org.uk and its relevance to their sector. In all, over 240 key media contacts followed the launch, leading to 53 articles appeared in the immediate post-launch period, six daily picture slots in The Independent, a full page in Metro, a quarter page in The Guardian and a full page story in the Mirror.

Commenting on the launch, Graham Coult, editor of Managing Information, said: “What Grappa did with the Ingenious launch was a model which should be copied by other agencies. From an editor’s point of view, the press kit was informative, non-clichéd and made all the relevant points, and the launch was excellent. I hope to be able to make more of what I learnt at the launch in addition to what I have already published.”

It’s late November and 36 degrees outside, yet yards away, kids are skiing and throwing snowballs. I am in Dubai, to be precise The Mall of the Emirates, the city’s largest shopping centre, and if rumour is to be believed, can be seen glowing from space.

 The reputation of Dubai is one of a gas-guzzling and energy-profligate society, the epitome of unsustainable living. Large indigenous oil reserves mean oil is cheap and energy is worth little. Dubai citizens are among those generating the largest amount of waste per head in the world. So consider my surprise when I discovered that some of the major mall owners in Dubai have been started on ways to respond to environmental and sustainability challenges.

The key challenge is public education. Take plastic bags as an example. Given that Dubai is a car-born society, plastic bags could be an area targeted for reduction. Mall owners accept that they struggle to challenge the mentality of many retailers, whose staff unthinkingly push them to shoppers for even the smallest purchases. Some retailers though are now looking at replacing plastic with jute in moves that echo the UK. 

However, changing attitudes also requires making change accessible. In the UK, Tesco or Sainsbury’s, or the average high street, will boast facilities to recycle glass, paper, cardboard, plastic. However, in Dubai recycling facilities are few on the ground. Those that are available are geared towards cans and plastic. The net result is that Emiratis are not in the habit of separating their waste, nor easily capable of recycling it.

The Dubai Municipality is determined to educate people about ways they can improve the environment. Its Target 555 initiative has made some efforts by encouraging citizens to cut average waste per capita from 1000 kg by nearly 50 per cent. And in terms of on-the-ground action initiatives, mall owners are committed to doing their bit to educate too. Involving children and schools is uppermost, with management staff working with teachers on ways to inspire children on environmentally-friendly initiatives that they can also take home to engage their families. The malls for their part see community action as key.

For a city that has virtually no public transport system (a Metro system is currently being built, while the bus network is sporadic), taxis are inexpensive and oil is cheap, so car usage is high. The municipality is attempting to cut car travel and ease congestion, which is crippling during rush hours, in a number of ways. These include new hybrid buses, encouraging car-sharing, disallowing the registration of vehicles over a certain age (due to their higher CO2 emissions) and offering businesses incentives.

While most mall owners would protest that a green transport policy for their shoppers is unattainable due to the lack of alternatives to the car, they can reduce congestion and carbon emissions by bussing in their staff from the camps and compounds which house their workforce. They would do well to consider the UK phenomenon of high end ‘shopping tours’ and other organised shopping experiences to cut the number of vehicles arriving. This would reduce the cost of running so many air-conditioned car parks while improving the consumer experience. This is a real opportunity for Dubai – to take sustainability at heart as an aspirational, lifestyle option for the future.

With year-round sunshine and summer temperatures averaging 40 – 50 degrees centigrade, keeping the malls cool is fundamental to the shopping experience. Air conditioning systems draw vast amounts of energy. Artificial lighting – particularly to generate ambient lighting – is enormously popular. Ironically, older malls made better use of the ample natural daylight than some of the newer builds. Perhaps future mall design could take inspiration from recent examples in the region where buildings have been constructed to take the best of local traditional construction ideas to create modern, low energy and iconic architecture fit for the climate. Of course, water is a rarer and far more expensive commodity. The key issues are how to both conserve and recycle it, and everywhere in Dubai this is a challenge waiting to be tackled with the urgency it deserves.

With the number of malls in the ground, it is easy to forget that retail is still fairly nascent to Dubai – at most twenty years. If the UK experience is a fair barometer, major retailers and major mall owners now have an opportunity to lead change for sustainability in a fast developing retail world. Crucially, both they and the municipality must work to help business and simultaneously engage citizens, in order to challenge its unsustainable image.

So, which shopping centres demonstrate best practice?

Energy Excellence

Wafi is almost a city within Dubai city, boasting luxury residential, office, leisure, entertainment, hotel and shopping, the latter centred on a mall that is home to approximately 350 stores and Khan Murjan, a soon –to-be-open underground Arabesque souk.

Wafi built its own district cooling plant to improve its energy efficiency and utilise less resources. It is the first building in the UAE to receive a Gold Leadership award in Energy Environmental Design (LEED) certification, as well the first in the Middle East to earn a Gold rating under the USA Green Building Council’s award scheme. There are only two utility buildings in the world to achieve the rating.

The district cooling plant features some of the most energy efficient equipment available. It already serves several areas of Wafi, including the shopping mall and the new Raffles Hotel. Energy use has been reduced by a third to date. With further development, it will provide for Wafi as a whole.

Wafi Mall

Integrated approach

Sustainability has been integral to the BurJuman Centre’s operational detail since it opened in 1992. The centre may house more luxury brands per square metre than any mall in the Middle East, yet as it expands the focus is on improving operational efficiencies and the environmental footprint of the shopping experience for customers.

Recent upgrading of its building management system for temperature control has enabled BurJuman to reduce its energy use by an average of 10 per cent despite construction work to extend the mall. Water and lighting operates as far as possible on-demand. Natural lighting is used during daylight hours. Sophisticated programmable lighting controls minimise energy use by ensuring ambient lighting is available only when required. Hand operated sensors minimise bathroom water use and approximately 15,000 gallons of grey water from the likes of wash basins and showers is captured and recycled on-site This water supports the entire demand for landscaping, which includes 500 year old olive trees and 100 year old Bonsais that contribute to the ambiance and quality of air in the malls.

Carbon footprinting enables BurJuman to measure and monitor strategies to meet its own reduction targets and those set by the Municipality.  New detection and air control systems have enabled BurJuman to reduce CO2 levels to half that of the Municipality’s target for commercial organisations. A green transport plan minimises carbon emissions by transporting staff to and from home to the centre daily.

If you have comments on this article, we welcome your feedback.

The Mela featured a rich variety of entertainment. Henna artist Joshiv, whose clients range from Sir Bob Geldof and Mick Jagger to Ashwariya Rai, delighted visitors with her beautiful henna designs.

 Shoppers packed The Mall for the ethnic-inspired fashion shows, which also featured traditional Bollywood dancing. An array of authentic stalls selling Indian arts, crafts and jewellery drew in visitors from East London. Asiana Magazine provided Bollywood style and image makeovers giving shoppers the chance to pose and be photographed as a Bollywood star thanks to some clever image manipulation!

The Mela also included a fun-packed Rangoli arts workshop for children, where they made traditional decorations using paints and artists’ materials. Rangoli is used commonly outside homes in India.

Andrea Marie, marketing manager for The Mall commented: “The Mela was a fantastic day for the local community. Not only did it provide entertainment, but it gave visitors to our centre a flavour of Indian culture, from dance and music to henna designs.

 “It’s the first time we have brought together such a rich variety of Asian-inspired entertainment and judging by the boost in visitor numbers it is clear they loved the addition of authentic Indian arts and crafts to the shopping we have at The Mall.”

Footfall on the day soared by 18% in comparison to the same weekend in 2007.

Click here to view photographs from the fashion show on asian fashion blog.

Over a four year period Grappa increased the press coverage and contact base for one of its largest and most commercially important regional headquarters in Leicester, which serves the entire East Midlands corridor. PR activity has existed to support commercial strategy of the business by amplifying WYG’s strengths in planning, consultancy and traffic management.

Through the delivery of the programme from our office in the region, we have also enabled WYG to present a more friendly and approachable face to its market place by sustained community initiatives and supporting media relations.

These activities have helped WYG achieve goodwill and understanding, as well as positively engage clients, employees and wider stakeholders.