leveraging pr at icsc
TRANSCRIPT
If you go to ICSC without a PR program…
You’re wasting the biggest opportunity of the year
to make a name for yourself in retail real estate.
Consider the sheer number of people in your industry
in one place.
37,000 attendees
853,000 square feetThat’s 2843 football fields.
And those potential clients, tenants and
financial partners are on social media in a BIG way.
#RECon16 was used
19,424 times last year.
Great takeaway from #RECon16: “Being an
entrepreneur is just doing it and figuring it
out” -Bobbi Brown
35,000 people come from all over the world
to enhance and propel the retail industry forward #RECon16 @ICSC_RECon
Great takeaway from #RECon16: “Being an
entrepreneur is just doing it and figuring it
out” -Bobbi Brown
35,000 people come from all over the world
to enhance and propel the retail industry forward #RECon16 @ICSC_RECon
Great takeaway from #RECon16: “Being an
entrepreneur is just doing it and figuring it
out” -Bobbi Brown
The physical store can provide the experience
customers crave! #Shoptalk @shoptalk #RECon16 @
ICSC_RECon #retail #O2O
35,000 people come from all over the world
to enhance and propel the retail industry forward #RECon16 @ICSC_RECon
#Inspired @ #RECon16! Networking w/ #CRE
women @crewnetwork & working together to change the industry.
#cwrecon16
Great takeaway from #RECon16: “Being an
entrepreneur is just doing it and figuring it
out” -Bobbi Brown
The physical store can provide the experience
customers crave! #Shoptalk @shoptalk #RECon16 @
ICSC_RECon #retail #O2O
35,000 people come from all over the world
to enhance and propel the retail industry forward #RECon16 @ICSC_RECon
#Inspired @ #RECon16! Networking w/ #CRE
women @crewnetwork & working together to change the industry.
#cwrecon16
Great takeaway from #RECon16: “Being an
entrepreneur is just doing it and figuring it
out” -Bobbi Brown
The physical store can provide the experience
customers crave! #Shoptalk @shoptalk #RECon16 @
ICSC_RECon #retail #O2O
What are the three elements that make a retail gamification
strategy work? #RECon16
@ICSC and @ICSC_recon have a combined 58,568
followers on Twitter.
More than 28,000 people like or follow ICSC’s Facebook page.
ICSC’s YouTube channel has 210,451 views.
And CRE media
will be at RECon
searching for
good stories
And your local media may well generate
coverage too.
For instance, if Atlanta is your hometown, outlets like the Atlanta Business
Chronicle, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Bisnow Atlanta have done wrap-up
stories in recent years, quoting locals who
attended.
So how do you get in the stories and insert yourself into
social conversations in an impactful way?
HIRE The Wilbert
Group
The leading CRE-focused PR firm in the country.
We’ll have two people on the ground
Caroline WilbertPresident, The Wilbert Group
Liana MoranAccount Supervisor, CRE Practice
Here’s our
5-STEP approach
1 Pre-Vegas buzz.
You want people reading about you, thinking about you and talking about you before
your first meeting.
1 Pre-Vegas buzz.
2 Make news.
We will release news, research or thought leadership
from your company to make headlines.
2 Make news.
3 Make connections.
We’ll secure interviews with journalists – to generate stories
now and build relationships for the long-term.
3 Make connections.
4 Get social.
We will create visual content that’s relevant and useful to your key
audiences – and share it with the massive crowd at ICSC. We’ll engage
with the right influencers. You don’t have time to think about social media
at RECON so we’ll do it for you.
4 Get social.
5 Wrap it up.
We’ll make sure you’re included in wrap-up stories about ICSC in your home market and we’ll ghost-write a blog about your takeaways from
ICSC. This positions you as a thought leader in your industry and city.
5 Wrap it up.
Past
CLIENT wins
• Focused on positioning the design firm and its architects as thought leaders during RECon
• Released Slideshares – about the future of malls (2015) and driverless cars (2016
• Slideshares viewed more than 3,000 times• Generated media coverage in Globe St., Atlanta
Business Chronicle, The Commercial Real Estate Show and more
As appeared in…
MAY 20, 2015 – JUNE 4, 2015
The American shopping mall is dead! Or so some would have you believe. Since 2010, more than two dozen shopping malls
across the country have closed. A proliferation of news articles and opinion pieces emphatically state
that the enclosed mall concept is a thing of the past.
But before we place the final R.I.P. placard on the mall, it might be worthwhile to consider some other factors. Malls do not die because the idea of an enclosed shopping venue is unattractive and obsolete. They die because demographics shift, shopping habits change, mall owners face financial chal-lenges, malls become overly saturated with the same stores and merchan-dise, or a better retail venue is built nearby. The consolidation of
department stores is one exam-ple – think about Macy’s buying Rich’s, and maybe Belk soon as well.
If a mall does shut its doors, it is because it failed to adapt. As far back as 10 B.C., people gath-ered together to conduct com-merce. There is something magi-cal about being among hundreds or thousands of other people shopping. To illustrate that malls are not on the downward spiral, consider the following: 1) mall rents are on the increase; 2) mall sales are on the increase; and 3) net operating income in malls is increasing – in 2014 shopping mall NOI recorded the highest year-over-year growth in 14 years. These three facts alone should dispel any rumors about the demise of the American mall.
No discussion about any subject is complete without inserting the effect millennials will have on the mall. Conventional thought today would purport that this demographic will be the final nail in the proverbial coffin. But that would be a misguided conclusion.
In a recent study, Opinion Lab concluded that among millenni-als: 1) 85 percent planned to go to a mall this summer; 2) 60 percent say they go at least once a month; 3) nearly half rank browsing in stores as their No. 1 reason for going to the mall; and 4) only 10 percent say there is nothing to motivate them to spend time in a mall.
The retail specialty practice group at Cooper Carry has been involved in the design of over 5 million square feet of recent retail projects, encompassing new con-struction and renovation of malls and large open-air projects.
Landmark Mall near Washington, D.C., is one such example. Built in 1965, the mall lost its luster and the owner suf-fered a financial crisis. New own-ers are repositioning the mall to become an urban mixed-use proj-ect. The plan includes taking off the roof, demolishing some retail space and adding apartments.
The conclusion is simple – if 3.2 percent of American malls have failed, then 96.8 percent have not.
Malls will refine or reposition themselves as they respond to changing demographics, shopping habits or oversaturation of simi-lar retailers. The bottom line is most of the malls in trouble will get new owners with the capital it takes to achieve the refine-ment or repositioning required to remain a viable investment asset.
Those that do not will be part of the 3.2 percent.
Ultimately, the key to keeping the American mall alive and well is adapting to current trends. This means creating more walkable and appealing space that caters to demographic shifts and chang-es in shopping habits.s
Is the traditional enclosed shopping mall dead?
Angelo CarusiPrincipal, retail
specialty practice group, Cooper Carry, Atlanta
Gar MusePrincipal, retail
specialty practice group, Cooper Carry, Atlanta The Landmark Mall near Washington, D.C., is being redeveloped as an open-air, mixed-use center.
Traditional malls that are failing must be repositioned through creative redevelopment.
• Secured pre-conference press every year for NAP, including a Development magazine cover before RECon in 2016 and Shopping Centers Today before New York ICSC in 2016.
• Managing partner Mark Toro did a live Facebook interview with ICSC in 2015
• Hosted pre-ICSC Twitter chat #RECon2016Pregame
• Wilbert posted on NAP social throughout RECon and nearly tripled typical monthly engagement on Twitter
Development®
SUMMER 2016
IDEAS I ISSUES I TRENDS
Commercial Real Estate Development
Reliable Bandwidth For Office Buildings 60The Future of E-commerce Fulfillment Centers 66Building for Wellness 78
The Rise of Experiential Retail
The Rise of Experiential Retail 52
ADVANCE COPY. The final version of this article will appear in Development magazine (summer 2016), published by NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association.
North American Properties’ Avalon in Alpharetta, Georgia, offers shoppers a multitude of experiences, including open-air fashion shows. Photo courtesy of North American Properties and Raftermen Photo
• Focused in 2016 on positioning CEO Jeffrey Bayer as thought leader leading up to and during the conference
• Pre-conference coverage included interviews with Jeffrey Bayer in Chain Store Age, Globe St., Real Estate Forum and The Commercial Real Estate Show
• Announcement that Jeffrey Bayer named an ICSC Trustee received coverage in Birmingham Business Journal, Done Deals, CityBizList and others
We have also executed impactful
RECon PR programs for:
Want to make news at ICSC RECon?
