china-growth failed to meet ambition

Influx Insights — 2008-06-19T10:09:15Z

The National has an amazing story about the South China Mall.

It was planned to be the world's largest and it now sits under-used (planned to house 1,500 stores and currently has just 12), the victim of a dream that failed to materialize.

Many speculators had big plans for China and wanted to capitalize on the supposed massive growth of the new middle class. Sadly, this growth didn't happen fast enough to propel this new mall to greatness.

It's perhaps a lesson that shows just how easy it is to get carried away with projections of potential and suggests that China's amazing growth can continue for ever.

"On a recent Friday afternoon, an amusement-park employee, slouched in a forsaken ticket booth, tried to kill time by making origami. Another worker slept, with perfect impunity, on a table. In front of the haunted house attraction, one attendant was doing hand-stands while two others looked blankly on.

There was nothing else to do, because the South China Mall, which opened with great fanfare in 2005, is not just the world’s largest. With fewer than a dozen stores scattered through a space designed to house 1,500, it is also the world’s emptiest – a dusty, decrepit complex of buildings marked by peeling paint, dead light bulbs, and dismembered mannequins.

“They set out to be the biggest, and hoped that being the biggest would be the attracting factor,” says David Hand, a retail analyst at Jones Lang LaSalle in Beijing, who has followed the project. “It hasn’t delivered.”

The world has plenty of empty malls; there’s even an American website, deadmalls.com, where connoisseurs of desolation post photos and reminiscences of the once-great, now-gutted places where they spent the Saturday afternoons of their youth. What sets the South China Mall apart from the rest, besides its mind-numbing size, is that it never went into decline. The tenants didn’t jump ship; they never even came on board. The mall entered the world pre-ruined, as if its developers had deliberately created an attraction for people with a taste for abandonment and decay. It is a spectacular real-estate failure – but it is also, as I saw when I spent two days exploring the site in May, a strangely beautiful monument to the big dreams that China inspires."

It's a strange coincidence that the story appears in a Dubai based publication- a country that has pushed development to the limits in the hope of becoming THE new tourist destination.

This story came from the amazing BLDGB blog, who has its own post on this incredible story.

Posted by Ed Cotton

making health insurance tangible- florida blue

Influx Insights — 2007-12-03T11:54:40Z

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida is a health insurer with its own store, Florida Blue, in Jacksonville.

It's been created and staffed to help explain products and help move people closer to BCBSF's brand of health insurance.

It's a smart move because despite being its importance, it's an area that it's hard to get people interested in. Going beyond ads to create a three dimensional experience makes a lot of sense.

Welcome Area:

Kids Play Area:

Posted by Ed Cotton

influx factoid- 1.6 pieces of marketing material per second

Influx Insights — 2007-06-14T18:50:51Z

A new pilot study from POPAI looks at how UK shoppers engage in retail marketing at Morrisons and ASDA/Wal-Mart stores.

It reveals just how challenging the battle for consumer attention has become.

"534 shoppers enter the store per hour; shoppers are exposed to 1.6 pieces of marketing materials per second as they navigate the stores; shoppers' eyes are drawn to 17.8 percent of the marketing materials..."

Over 80% of materials get ignored.

The battle for attention is real.

Posted by Ed Cotton

Influx Insights Tag Feed: shopping

china-growth failed to meet ambition

making health insurance tangible- florida blue

influx factoid- 1.6 pieces of marketing material per second