The History of the Mall Tour Marketing Campaign
Contrary to popular belief, Mall Tours have not been around forever. In fact, there was a time where the only kiosks you would see at malls, where the little stands selling useless knick-knacks. It wasn’t until the rise of experiential marketing in the late 2000’s that the idea of brands traveling between malls to showcase their products became popular. However, nowadays Mall tours are a nationwide phenomenon and occur extremely frequently. We pioneered Samsung’s very first Mall tours before they became the phone giant that they are today. Samsungs nationwide success spurred the popularity of mall tours and the ripples that their activations have made are still being seen today. We were the pioneers that set the standard for a new type of retail marketing.
The Largest Mall Tour Ever.
When companies decide to invest in marketing events, they usually follow the standard business philosophy of crawl, walk, run. The story is completely different for Samsung however. Faced with the growing threat of Apple and their exponentially growing market share, Samsung did not have time for the crawl, walk, run approach. With the threat of their competitors looming over their business, Samsung skipped the crawling/walking and went straight to a full sprint. With only a 4 Week lead time, we created 20 mall tour activations which would span over 50 deployments nationwide. That totals to a whopping 1000 activations. The mind-bogglingly large scope of this project was no easy feat to accomplish, but luckily we completed the task with time to spare.
The nationwide holiday mall tours were a phenomenal success. The mall tours raised awareness about Samsung’s new and innovative line of Galaxy smartphones which were still a fairly new product line at the time. In addition, their products were beautifully showcased on milk-white acrylic counters against a lit piece of translucent acrylic, giving a very cutting edge and futuristic feel to the entire activation.
A Logistical Symphony
In a perfect world, once a build is completed, the installation and shipment is all smooth sailing. However, there are always challenges presented when ideas mesh with reality. For the Samsung Mall tours, it was no different. These Pop-up Retail activations had to be deployed on an overnight install all across America. At the same time, the east coast was undergoing one of the biggest hurricanes of the decade, Hurricane Sandy. Unfortunately, we couldn’t put a stop to the truck shipments and the show had to keep on going. We expertly coordinated with the trucking company, malls, and producers to still have a succesful launch. Even though we had to deal with several power issues caused by the storm, all East Coast locations were successfully installed on budget and on time.
Dedicated to Durability
An installation can go great, but if durability suffers than its all a lost cause. These activations had to go out for 50 separate deployments, which meant that they had to weather the storm, even if that storm caused by people and not wind. To achieve a level of durability that could withstand 50 high traffic activations is a unique engineering challenge. However, when it comes down to it, the material choice makes all the difference. For all of the Samsung mall tour activations, we used a brushed aluminum as well as a white acrylic to create the most durable possible structure. Much to our joy, these activations wound up going all 50 deployments without the need for any major repairs.
The holiday season is coming up which means you will be seeing a lot more mall tours popping up all around the nation. The biggest brands in America will all start competing for space on the mall tile floor to grab as much consumer attention as possible. If you are a brand marketer, consider these unique and custom activations to promote your clients brand. As for who you should use to build it. I’m thinking you already know the answer to that question. We have been doing mall tours for 7 years and have worked with huge brands such as Nintendo and Samsung. We can help you fabricate your activations to last, which means that you will be saving you and your client lots of money in the long run.
If you or your client is in the market to start a mall tour marketing campaign give us a call!