leveraging pr at icsc

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?

Let’s chat about it.

Caroline Wilbert404-748-1250

404-405-6479 (cell)cwilbert@thewilbertgroup.com