Combining tech with experiential marketing: Sino Group's innovative experiences won 11 awards in Marketing Excellence Awards

The retail industry in Hong Kong has been impacted by many challenges over the past year. However, these challenges have not hampered shopping malls from creating engaging events for their customers. For proof, look no further than Sino Group’s recent achievements, taking home 11 trophies at this year’s Marketing Excellence Awards.

Keeping their finger on the pulse of the consumer is crucial to Sino Group’s success. Their collaboration with the internationally renowned Leonardo3 Museum in Italy brought world-class exhibitions to Olympian City, and achieved success as a must-go event for Hongkongers.

Coinciding with the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s passing, the exhibition demonstrated Sino Group’s commitment to promoting the development of innovation and technology and reinforcing Olympian City’s effort in popularising STEM education through the brilliant ideas and achievements of da Vinci. It won one gold award in the Excellence in Public Relations category; two silvers in the categories of Excellence in Targeted Event and Excellence in Experiential Marketing, and the bronze award in the Excellence in Mass Event category.The event was Leonardo3 Museum’s first exhibition in a shopping mall in Asia, displaying over 1,000 digitised manuscripts and interactive drawings. The eight-metre tall LED wall displaying a mosaic image of Mona Lisa was also the signature icon of the exhibition.

This well curated exhibition required meticulous planning and execution to generate more traffic. Leveraging massive harbourfront LED walls to advertise the exhibition, Sino Group featured a number of eye-catching machines built based on da Vinci’s concepts to arouse interest at the venue, arranged educational tours and STEM classes for groups from NGOs and schools, and organised live musical performances with Asia-first reconstruction of the Silver Lyre in horse skull, to direct attention to the exhibition.

Over the campaign period, the exhibition received more than 220,000 visitors. More than 40 learning tours for 1,000 students and 100 families in collaboration with NGOs were arranged, while publicity reached over 800 primary and secondary schools as well.Looking forward, this exhibition was not Sino Group’s last attempt at promoting innovation and technology, although 2020 has been plagued by the pandemic.

Since February, Sino Group switched its STEM classes from offline to online during the days that local schools have been required to close by the government. DIY learning kits have been offered to shoppers so they could interact with Sino Group’s STEM Pilots during the STEM e-classes on Facebook.

Recently, aliens from different planets are gathering at Olympian City to attend the “Alien Planet Christmas Party”. Guests are welcome to a giant alien spacecraft and marvel at eight colourful planets hanging above the Alien Planet. “Alien Planet Christmas Party” is a brainchild of the Olympian Kids Imagineer which is an “event consultancy” founded by Olympian City and steered by 15 children aged from 5 to 10.

The founding of the “Olympian Kids Imagineer” aims to offer children hands-on opportunities to not just participate in but lead the creative process of projects, and a learning experience that can boost their self-confidence and give them a sense of achievement. In the future, the team will recruit more children and be involved in projects other than Christmas events to bring smiles and surprises to the patrons of Olympian City.

In “Alien Planet Christmas Party”, the young team of creatives took the lead in designing the aliens, alien alphabets, and various sensory activities that will strike a chord with their peers, bringing various aliens and games together under one roof for an out-of-this-world holiday fest.

Adding a digital element to the experience, members of S+ REWARDS can leverage the dedicated app to complete a mission on the planets.Upon completing the mission, they will receive a badge and can use it to redeem alien-themed gifts designed by the kids such as stationery, 4-in-1 “Space Advenrture” board game, level 2 printed-mask, denim tote bag, mask keepers, walking balloons with S+ REWARDS points.

As the core part of Sino Group’s cross mall promotion. S+ REWARDS - Hong Kong’s first multi-mall socialised interactive rewards programme - covers the group’s four flagship malls: tmtplaza, Olympian City, Citywalk and China Hong Kong City. The ‘S’ in S+ REWARDS stands for Sino Malls, social, and spending rewards. It is a socialised interactive rewards programme that links up all shopping malls under Sino Group and connects people at the same time.

Customers can download the S+ REWARDS app for free. It can connect them to over 750 merchants in the group’s four flagship malls. By using this simple app with no physical card, customers can shop and spend across the four flagship malls anytime to earn points and enjoy different exciting offers and rewards.In addition to offers and rewards from the S+ REWARDS programme, the interactive features of the S+ REWARDS app allow customers to share promotional offers, favourites and best buys, discounts, and other shopping tips or experiences with their friends. Combining games with shopping experience, S+ REWARDS features various special activities and interactive games for customers to win festival-specific or time-limited offers.

Not only performing well in the Marketing Excellence Awards, S+ REWARDS also snatched the prestigious title of Best of Show – Brand in The Loyalty and Engagement Awards 2020 in Hong Kong. The same campaign was presented five gold, one silver and three bronze awards.

As for other recognition, S+REWARDS won two awards at The HKMA/TVB Awards for Marketing Excellence in the categories of Excellence in Online and Offline Integration and Excellence in Small Budget Marketing.S+ REWARDS will have several service upgrades in the upcoming year. For example, members can use the new S Coupon from Q1 2021 onwards as cash at participating merchants across tmtplaza, Olympian City, Citywalk and China Hong Kong City.

There will be four denominations: HK$100, HK$50, HK$20 and HK$10. Malls will offer discounts occasionally to allow members to redeem S Coupons at lower points.

Apart from this, Sino Mall will roll out a points registration campaign, allowing customers to opt for joining the campaign or simply use the spending to earn points; and this campaign can be set to target a specific segment by inviting them to participate in a designated promotion. It’s expected that this campaign will launch in Q1 2021.

This article is sponsored by Sino Group.