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Today’s marketing directors must boost image — and bottom line

By Debra Hazel

Lucrative programs such as brand promotions are likely to occupy more of a marketing director’s time these days.

A typical mall marketing director’s day circa 1982 might have involved scheduling Santa Claus, checking with tenants about a sidewalk sale and dealing with media, including public relations and advertising.

But for a marketing director today, the daily activity could run the gamut from downloading and analyzing market demographics to meeting with specialty leasing reps; from arranging event sponsorships to updating daily sales figures for corporate headquarters.

Perhaps no field at a shopping center development or management company has changed as much as marketing. The advent of publicly traded REITs and advances in technology have forced marketing staffs to work more closely with other departments to maximize the value of their centers.

Yet for the most part companies have kept staffing levels the same, with one director and perhaps an assistant at each project, and many firms have even cut their marketing budgets. The result, industry observers say, is that today’s marketing directors are busier than ever, and some insist that the essence of marketing — connecting with the customer — is being sacrificed. “What drives the process in a public company is totally different from a private company,” said Charlotte Ellis, SCMD, president of Cary, N.C.-based consultancy Ellis & Others and a former corporate marketing director for both privately and publicly held companies. “The customer is obscured; decisions aren’t made because of them.”

The shift from promotion to productivity can be seen as a watershed for shopping center marketing.

“As the companies went public, marketing directors became the logical choice to generate dollars,” agreed Christine A. Menna, SCMD, vice president of marketing and corporate communications at Crown American Realty Trust, Johnstown, Pa.

“It’s a position that gets pulled in all directions. But it’s coming to the point where the malls have less time and money to do true marketing.”

Not that long ago, marketing directors were really promotion directors, focused more on putting car shows in the malls and dealing with press inquiries than on statistical analysis.

“When I first started at Greenwood Park Mall, I was told, ‘You have to deal with the annual meeting, Santa’s arrival and analyzing trick-or-treat results,’ ” said Garnet Vaughan, SCMD, president of The Marketing Department, Greenwood, Ind. “Today I’d be told, ‘Here’s your vacancy rate, analyze your [net operating income], and here’s your budget deficit.’”

With the bulk of ‘A’ and ‘B+’ malls now owned by public REITs, reporting and sales requirements, which were once confined to the board room, have filtered down to the center level.

“It’s become more critical that everything is really focused on productivity,” said James W. Brewster, CMD, senior vice president of marketing for Chicago-based General Growth Properties. “Marketing’s role has now changed to where we are now public relations professionals, crisis communications professionals, analysts of retail productivity and research professionals.”

Data collection and analysis are so vital that some companies will now hire someone with research skills before a person with a communications background. As a result, more and more professionals with business training are being hired (see story, Tougher job demands more-qualified applicants).

“Definitely, over the past three years, you look for a completely different being,” said Susan Valentine, SCMD, senior vice president of marketing at The Macerich Co., Santa Monica, Calif. “You need people who are technically computer-savvy. Otherwise, there’s a disconnect. We have to be strategic marketers with computers.”

“We used to hire people who could develop a marketing strategy, planning events and promotional strategies,” agreed Barbara Ivankovich, SCMD, senior vice president of corporate marketing at CBL & Associates Properties, Chattanooga, Tenn. “The focus was on what’s happening at your center. Now we have to be much more strategic-planning people who analyze the total market and trends in the industry.”

Among those trends is the arranging of corporate sponsorships, which have become important to companies’ bottom lines, and often the job falls squarely on the marketing director.

However, one good thing to come out of all this, marketing directors say, is that they may finally be getting some respect — something they assert was lacking at times from the builders and deal makers of the industry’s early years.

“Very often the lines between marketing and leasing were a brick wall,” observed Stanley L. Eichelbaum, SCMD, president of Marketing Developments, Cincinnati. Said Ellis, “Marketers were always reminded that they weren’t the ones buying the merchandise or hiring the people who sell it.”

The fact is, the shopping center industry is one of the few businesses in which marketing plays little to no role in the development of the product it sells. Very few companies consult the marketing end early in the development or redevelopment process, officials say.

Today, customer service is more of a priority than promotions in some malls.

“Our industry had not evolved to create a true marketing position,” said William N. Fullington, SCMD, vice president of marketing services at the Cleveland-based Richard E. Jacobs Group, acknowledging that “people who were hired years ago probably weren’t qualified to shape a product.”

To justify greater involvement, marketers must become even savvier about statistical analysis, said Todd Putman, vice president of corporate marketing for Westfield America, Los Angeles. “If you look at the great companies, analytics drives marketing, not the other way around,” he said.

Some companies are shifting accordingly. Both Ivankovich and Fullington say they have been involved in design meetings, and marketing directors routinely get involved in leasing matters.

“The value of our marketing directors is the highest it’s ever been,” said Macerich’s Valentine.

Yet that also has a downside. With rare exceptions mostly at the largest centers, marketing staffing hasn’t changed, because fewer tenants now contribute to marketing funds, which shrinks budgets. Consequently, marketing directors must push more and more into their workweek.

Prioritizing is critical, with staff using technology more than ever before, redefining what marketing is and giving up some of the traditional promotion to other departments. Some companies, including Crown American and Taubman Centers, are marketing to consumers over the Internet, avoiding the time and expense of overseeing multiple direct-mail pieces (see story, Mall owners harnessing Web to generate sales).

And if marketing managers are no longer organizing craft fairs, they are often busy with customer service. As part of its Shoppingtown branding initiative, Westfield America considers its services — including free strollers and wheelchairs — the chief strength of its marketing campaign.

“Customer service is more important,” said Colleen Doyle, Eastern region marketing manager for Westfield America. “We’re not so much involved in planning the arts-and-crafts fairs.”

Most companies are seeking to offer the best of both the old and new marketing worlds, blending the events and programs that bind mall to shoppers with the accountability and fiscal responsibility owners demand.

Any planned marketing function “must position the property as the economic engine and social heart of the community,” Valentine said. “You must have the resources to implement it to the fullest, and it must have a positive return on investment.”

One professional speculates that marketing evolution may come to include even more of a community outreach, to other businesses and other developers.

“I’m surprised the industry hasn’t moved more to global marketing, to sharing information in areas where you don’t compete,” said Westfield’s Putman, who recently joined the industry after a career at such names as Coca-Cola, Princess Cruises, Procter & Gamble and Walt Disney Co. In other industries, he noted, rival companies do cooperate on certain marketing programs where direct competition is not involved. And that may be starting to happen in the shopping center business as well: After Sept. 11, for instance, six major mall developers coordinated fund-raising activities.

Such transitions are something to be expected in the continuing maturation of the industry, particularly as competition increases. In that respect, retail real estate marketing may finally begin to catch up to the consumer-products side.

“We have to continue to change,” Eichelbaum said. “Marketing is the base of what is keeping the company going.”

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