Hildreds Shopping Centre is known for its creative displays and the effort it puts into its holiday decor. So it should come as no surprise that when shopping center staff put their minds to participating in a community parade, they’d give it their all.

The 2010 Skegness Carnival had a Mardi Gras theme, and Hildreds embraced it whole-heartedly. They dressed up as clowns, trapeze artists, and strong men, and created a float that included a a polystyrene eight foot elephant, a big top tent, lions and a clown car filled with bubbles and smoke.

The shopping center took first place in the float competition. The carnival, which Hildreds Shopping Centre sponsors each year, raises money for community charities. Pete Roffe, shopping centre manager, said: “We are pleased to take part in such a community driven occasion. The carnival is always a crowd puller for the town and gives everyone the chance to work together to make it a success. Every member of the Hildreds team had a great time, and coming first in the trade category is the icing on the cake to a tremendous day had by all.

On Monday, shopping centers across New Zealand shared a tasty treat with shoppers, for a great cause.

August 30th was the second annual Cupcake Day, a nation-wide fundraiser for the SPCA. Cupcake cooks across the country registered to bake the tasty treats to sell in stalls, with all proceeds going to the SPCA.

As if the prospect of a delicious, decadent snack weren’t enough, many locations held competitions to make things even more fun. There were winners amongst cooks and consumers, for the most creative cupcake, the most extreme location for cupcake consumption, the most cupcakes baked, and the most money raised. Seperate winners were chosen among the 12-and-under set and amongst those over 13.

Art Nouveau Series 1, a cc licensed flickr photo shared by Sugarbloom Bev ;o)

For parents, back-to-school shopping is a part of life. It has to be done somewhere; the only question is where to do it. So how do you make sure that your shopping center is on the top of parents’ minds for back-to-school?

Burlington Mall recently found a way. Rather than limit itself to the more passive forms of traditional marketing, the Canadian shopping center took matters into its own hands with a guerrilla marketing campaign sure to draw shoppers’ attention. Sneaking out early one morning, representatives of the shopping center decorated trees in surrounding neighborhoods with 2000 free t-shirts. Shoppers woke up to a great reminder to get out and shop, and some free swag for back-to-school.

The shirts were plain white tees with tags suggesting that shoppers head to Burlington Mall for their BTS shopping, so the lucky recipients weren’t burdened with marketing slogan shirts. The t-shirts also tied in to the center’s Back 2 Cool Tee-Torial contest, which has youngsters visiting the mall in their favorites tees to talk on video about their styles for fall.

Here’s a video from Burlington Mall showing off their stunt and some great reactions:

There’s no question that Facebook and Twitter can be valuable marketing tools, but building a community of followers can feel like quite the marketing challenge itself.

General Growth Properties plans to help its marketers skip some of the hard stuff. It’s launched a promotional sweepstakes that exists solely to build the online communities of its malls. The Spread the Love Sweepstakes will give away a $10,000 gift card to one lucky winner, and four $100 gift cards for the winner’s friends. It’s also offering daily draws of $20 – $100.

To enter, all GGP shoppers need to do is sign up on the contest microsite and “Like” and follow a GGP mall on Facebook and Twitter respectively. Sharing the promotion with friends earns the entrant more chances to win. It’s a promotion we’ve seen again and again pushing shopping center newsletters. But with Facebook’s aggressive social recommendation system, it could easily pay off exponentially for GGP malls. And taking the work out of finding new social fans means mall marketers can focus on creating the content that will keep those fans hooked.

Back to School is big, scary, fun time for students of all ages, but it’s marketed mostly to parents, teens and college students. How about something for the kids?

Erin Mills Town Centre is making back-to-school fun for the younger set next week with its School of Rock. Kids aged 4-12 will find that back-to-school rocks with a lot of great activities.

The “Main Stage” event is Rock 101, a 45-minute session that teaches the most important fundamentals of rock: creating rock star “must haves” like personalized guitars, crazy band names, posters and buttons. They will also learn how to rock back-to-school fall fashions, with lucky participants chosen to take part in the School of Rock fashion show.

Also, the event will remind kids (and this probably won’t surprise them) that Chocolate Rocks! The Chocolate Rocks event will give kids the chance to make a chocolate pizza. Mommy & Me Yoga will be extra cool with health tips for back to school and yoga poses that can be done anywhere. And kids can learn how to throw a real rock ‘n roll Arty Party with Visual Arts Mississauga.

Families can commemorate the event with the School of Rock Photo Booth. Families can pick rock star inspired costume pieces from a tickle truck, have their hair spruced up, create cool glasses, and have their photo taken – all with the help of several of the mall’s retailers.

And finally, one of the coolest events: Rock Band Show and Tell. The Ontario Conservatory of Music will be demonstrating how to rock with cool instruments such as the bass, guitar and keyboards. Kids will get the hands-on experience to be a real rock star, which will make a great entry in “What I did on my summer vacation.”