Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Parkgate partnered with Safe@Last to help protect youth from the cold reality of sleeping on the streets.

Forget Louis Armstrong’s sultry ballad. Living on the streets and sleeping out in the cold is a harsh reality facing young runaways, and Safe@Last (SAL) has made it its mission to look out for them. The UK charity was founded in 2000 to hel[...] Tactics Subscribers Read More...

A Shot of Style

Community Room, Customer Service, Services

Pacific Centre is attracting fashion lovers with its Style Bar, which presents the latest trends and provide a unique experience for each user.

Apple was first to give its customer service program a bar-style makeover when it introduced its in-store Genius Bar, where shoppers could book appointments with techies. Then Gap opened its Denim Bar to ease customers’ painstaking jeans-fitti[...] Tactics Subscribers Read More...

A Passion for Chocolate

Community Room, Fundraisers

The Shops at Legacy’s Le Chocolate Feast event drew more than 4,000 shoppers and produced $11,000 in donations for My Possibilities charity.

Life needs more chocolate. It’s good for your heart (we’re talking the dark variety here), tastes delicious, acts as an anti-depressant and stimulates endorphins, hence the feeling of pleasure in every morsel. It also heightens your power of[...] Tactics Subscribers Read More...

Don’t Drop that Pudding!

Community Room, Fundraisers

Backed by a social media outreach campaign, local teams of “pudding runners” raise over $30,000 for cancer research at Covent Gardens.

Christmas pudding might not be your favorite holiday treat, but the Brits sure love it. That was obvious last year, when London’s Covent Garden hosted The Great Christmas Pudding Race (www.XmasPuddingRace.org.uk). On December 4, teams of si[...] Tactics Subscribers Read More...

Keep Pedaling!

Community Room, Sustainability

Customers sweat out their holiday shopping stress as they take turns pedaling to power NorteShopping’s Christmas tree lights.

Shoppers had to pedal very hard to keep NorteShopping’s tree lights on last Christmas. Wanting to focus its customers’ attention on energy conservation and efficiency, the Portuguese mall teamed up with SportZone to create a sustainable tr[...] Tactics Subscribers Read More...

Look Up

Community Room, Sustainability

If you can’t figure out what to do with those unattractive bare walls that lead to your mall’s washrooms or parkade, just turn them into vertical gardens.

French botanist Patrick Blanc (www.VerticalGardenPatrickBlanc) is credited for inventing the concept of vertical gardens, which a growing list of sustainability enthusiasts have embraced, and that includes malls. In collaboration with archite[...] Tactics Subscribers Read More...

Eco-Upgrade

Community Room, Sustainability

Cambridge Centre is planning to retrofit its refrigerated beverage vending machines to make them more environmentally friendly.

Instead of chucking its existing equipment into the landfill and purchasing new units, Canada's Cambridge Centre wants to equip them with VendingMiser units. The units, which cost less than $200, incorporate energy-saving technology into a sm[...] Tactics Subscribers Read More...

Tales of Survival

Charity Partnerships, Community Room

Shopper “tribes” face off in Exile Island competition to win kudos and help the grant wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses.

The Children’s Wish Foundation of Canada (CWF, ChildrensWish.ca) is not in the retail business. Its vocation is to rally the community to help grant wishes to children living with high-risk, life-threatening illnesses. This year, however, the [...] Tactics Subscribers Read More...

Reconstructing The Food Chain

Charity Partnerships, Community Room

Retail developer GPT joins forces with the Kitchen Garden Foundation to give children an opportunity to develop their food literacy skills.

Ask children in wealthy nations where their food comes from and few will trace back its origins to nature. To many, mashed potatoes come out of a box and meat somehow appears in the butcher’s back room at their local supermarket. But Australia[...] Tactics Subscribers Read More...

Ghosts In The Alley

Charity Partnerships, Community Room

Mark Hovath launched a video log to make the invisible visible, including the plight of America’s homeless.

Philanthropy is feel-good pursuits that can add some polish to any company’s image. In many communities, it’s also the only way to meet urgent needs. Focusing the public’s attention on those in need—specifically, homeless people across A[...] Tactics Subscribers Read More...