The first fifteen seconds of a mall activation

Nobody came here to meet you

A shopper walking through an atrium is not undecided. He is not browsing. He is going somewhere — to the food court, to the multiplex, to the shop his wife is already standing inside.

You are not competing with other brands for his attention. You are competing with lunch.

This is the thing most activation briefs get wrong before a single rupee is spent. They are written as if the shopper is looking for something to do. He isn't. He is already doing something, and your job is to be more interesting than that for fifteen seconds.

The table is the problem

Here is what usually gets built: a branded table, a backdrop, two promoters in company t-shirts, a bowl of leaflets.

Everybody has seen it. Everybody knows exactly what happens if they make eye contact. So everybody looks at their phone and walks a little faster.

The table announces a transaction. It says: stop here and someone will talk at you until you take a pamphlet you will throw away near the escalator.

A shopper reads that in less than a second, from twelve feet away, and routes around it.

What people actually stop for

Three things, in our experience, and none of them is information.

Something happening. Not something available — something in progress. A shopper will stop to watch another shopper doing something. He will not stop to be approached.

Something his child wants. This is the shortest route to a stationary adult in any mall in India. If the child stops, the parent stops, and now you have four minutes instead of fifteen seconds.

Something he can win, do, or take a picture of. Participation beats explanation every time. The moment a person's hands are involved, the brand has been experienced rather than described.

Notice what is missing from that list. Nobody has ever stopped because a promoter said "sir, one minute."

Build for the walk-past, not the walk-up

Design the activation for the person who will never come to it.

Most people will only ever see your setup at an angle, at speed, from the other side of the atrium. If the whole idea only makes sense to somebody standing in front of it, then the whole idea reaches the handful of people who stopped — and the thousands who walked past got nothing.

So the shape, the movement and the one line that matters have to work from thirty feet. Everything else is for the people who came closer.

The mall is a landlord, not a partner

A few practical things that decide more than the creative does.

• Atrium position is the campaign. The same setup near the entrance and near a service corridor are two different campaigns with two different results. Negotiate location harder than you negotiate rate.
• Footfall is not one number. A weekday afternoon and a Saturday evening are different businesses. Ask for footfall split by day, not the monthly total.
• Permissions take longer than production. Sound, open flame, anything overhead, anything a child climbs on — each one is a separate approval, and mall management is not in a hurry.
• The promoter is the product. People remember how they were spoken to. Underpay here and the best-built activation in the country becomes an awkward two minutes somebody tells their friends about.

What to actually measure

Footfall past your site is a number the mall gives you. It is not a result.

Measure what only your activation could have produced: how many people participated, how many stayed past the first minute, how many left a contact detail willingly, and — if you can — how many walked into the store afterwards.

And measure the ones who walked past. If your stop rate is bad, the creative is wrong. If your stop rate is fine but nothing happens after, the experience is wrong. Those are two different problems, and one number for both hides which one you have. Separating them is the first thing to design into any brand activation, before the creative.