Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/853369
42 S C T / A U G U S T 2 0 1 7 FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM AND SNAPCHAT ARE just some of the social-media platforms now compelling shopping center managers to throw out that old marketing playbook and come up with a whole new game plan. Social-media platforms have come a long way since Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook in 2004. The volume of social-media users grew by 21 percent last year, to 2.8 billion worldwide, according to a report titled Digital in 2017: Global Overview, published jointly by Internet and social-media management firms Hootsuite and We Are Social. Perhaps not surprisingly, property owners and managers are harnessing the growing power of social media to inform, educate and connect with the communities they serve — and also to drive traffic and sales. "Consumers have really been given a voice about where they shop and how they shop," said Cherilyn Megill, CRX, CMD, chief marketing officer of Phillips Edison & Co. "They talk about their experiences online, and marketing directors are paying attention to that." In fact, social-media marketing is replacing traditional print, radio and television ads for many shopping centers. "We very rarely invest in traditional media," said Liz Gillespie, CMD, a partner and the vice president of marketing at North American Properties. "We really believe in social media as the way to create lasting connections with our guests and residents and office tenants in our environments." North American Properties relied heavily on social media when it acquired the Atlantic Station mixed-use property, in midtown Atlanta, in late 2010. The company used Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to reach out locally and help curate the experience it sought to create through repositioning this mixed-use property. "From the beginning, we leveraged it almost as a daily focus group," Gillespie said. These days the firm is using social media across its portfolio and conducting a monthly analysis to see which tweets or posts perform best. "That helps us to understand what content resonates with the audience that we are attracting," said Gillespie. The #ReimagineCS tagline of the firm's Colony Square mixed-use property, also in midtown Atlanta, has already generated in excess of 900,000 "social impressions" (the number of times it has been used) year-to-date. The property's large sculpture that spells out "Midtown" has become one of the most photographed midtown selfie spots on Instagram, with upwards of 400 users having tagged it in posts. In this context, one of the challenges property owners often face is to adapt their strategies to fit a platform that is still evolving rapidly. "It used to be where marketing directors would put together a media plan, place ads and then forget about it; the whole marketing plan and strategy BY BETH MATTSON-TEIG Talking listening &