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Upper Canada Mall’s (UCM) recent Expressions of a Shopaholic event was one for the record books. Paying tribute to the classic Mad Dash game show, the Canadian mall held a competition that required men to perform three delectably cruel tasks in order to win a his and hers shopping spree worth $5,000: remember every detail of a “girl movie”, race around in high heels and accessorize their female game partner.
The competition celebrated the June 23 Blu-ray and DVD release of Touchstone Home Entertainment’s Confessions of a Shopaholic film. Between June 19 and July 6, customers could visit UCM’s ExpressionsOfAShopaholic.com micro-site to test their shopping knowledge by taking the Shopaholic Test.
UCM used in-mall signage and its digital board to promote the competition and encourage sign-ups. It placed an advertisement on Facebook for the first time to reach local residents who lived within a 50km radium from the mall, and took up ads in the Toronto Star newspaper as well as on local radio stations.
UCM also hired a street team to hand out 5,000 flyers at the mall on June 30th and its partnership with Disney came in handy, providing copies of the Shopaholic DVD and books for media promotions.
“We secured pre-event promo for registration purposes with two radio stations for an entire week and Rogers Cable’s York Region Daytime show,” noted Anna Ng of The Idea Workshop.
Then on July 11, the day of UCM’s sidewalk sale, three pairs comprising of one male and one female were randomly selected from 177 applications to compete in a live action game show in the mall’s center court to capture the grand prize, as well as a Confessions of a Shopaholic DVD.
The pairs were first quizzed on some movie trivia and more shopping-related information before entering the speed-styling round during which the men had to put on a pair of high heels and race to style and accessorize their partners as more than 200 shoppers looked on—overall traffic was up 4.71 percent that day.
The media was also present, including the Bradford Times, Snap Newmarket, The Newmarket Banner and the crew from Rogers TV’s First Local (York Region) show.