Every get the urge to go for a little comfort food as the winter drags on (and on, and on)? Merry Hill shoppers are being encouraged to go for it in the best possible way. The center is spending all of February promoting its tasty, tasty eateries.

Here’s the scoop: it’s calling February “Food Explorer Month” and rewarding shoppers who are willing to be a little courageous with their food choices. For starters, customers can play food reviewer whenever they eat at the center this month. For each meal purchased at the centre, customers will receive a review card to rate their experience. Not only will completed entries give shoppers the chance to win a £50 meal at Pizza Express, but their opinions will be counted. At the end of the month, one food outlet will be named Merry Hill’s First Class Eatery based on its reported merits in friendliness, tastiness, efficiency and value.

The center is also bringing in experts like Dr. Carrie Ruxton, an award-winning nutritionist, to make sure shoppers know how to explore food while considering their health. Samples will abound, and Little Explorers will get to participate for some half-term fun. Shoppers can also pick up food passports with some truly fantastic dining deals.

According to Kelly Reed, the center’s marketing manager, the idea is to “celebrate a variety of foods and to shine a spotlight on the great food options we have at Merry Hill for our customers to enjoy.” Hopefully everyone will tuck in for a good time.

Cupid’s arrow can be an elusive thing. We look for love all over, and sometimes we just can’t find it. But General Growth Properties hopes shoppers will persist long enough to win big at Northridge Fashion Center and many other centers nationwide.

The Where is the Love? challenge sends shoppers on a digital scavenger hunt for a little love. Those who find cupid, red lips and hearts adorned with QR codes are in luck: when scanned, they enter the shopper to win one of 30 $10 gift cards that will be awarded each day.

But that is, of course, not the ultimate prize. True romantics will get a chance to win a seven-day, six-night vacation for two to Kauai, Hawaii. They’ll be off to the new Kauai Marriott Resort on Kalapaki Beach with round trip airfare for two, hotel accommodations and airport transfers.

Persistence usually helps win hearts, and it will also help shoppers win the big prize. A shopper’s first scan awards one sweepstakes entry; finding a second code to scan awards five more, and the most persistant will get an extra ten for their third scan.

“Smartphones now play such a central part of our everyday lives, so we try to create fun and engaging promotions to keep our guests entertained while shopping at our malls,” said Keith Maladra, VP Digital Marketing, GGP. “This likely is the largest mall-based QR code promotion to date and just one example of how we’ll continue to use integrated mobile media at GGP.”

We’ve gotta admit, Brookside shopping centre went all out for its Australia Day Family Fun Day. Sounds like one of those days when we ate all the candy floss, rode all the rides and ended up sick at the end of the day. Sick, but so very happy.

With a receipt for a $5 purchase or a coupon from the event flyer, kids could pick up a wrist band for unlimited rides. That’s the Supa Swings, rock walls, jumping castles, super slides and cup ‘n saucer rides in one parking lot. Across the way, there was a petting zoo, pony rides, mini golf and a merry-go-round. That’s a lot of swinging and spinning.

Shoppers inside weren’t spared from the fun: Aussie-centric shows at center stage, free face painting, and supervised kiddie workshops for the parents that actually want to get some shopping done.

Oh, and candy floss. So much candy floss. Good luck with that, parents.

Is there a better way to spend long winter evenings than curled up at home with your favorite… mall? That’s exactly what Billings Bridge is planning with its Play and Win promotion.

This is a promotion with low overhead and four very important goals: connecting with shoppers on Twitter and Facebook, through its e-newsletter and in the center. To pull it off, Billings Bridge created a scene: a cozy winter evening with a few of its shoppers’ favorite activities.

Center court was set up with a sofa, a television and a mannequin dressed in warm pyjamas. With them were four fun (but relatively simple) prize packs: an OPI nail polish set, the Pirates of the Caribbean Blu-Ray box set and a Snuggie, four of the hottest board games, and an Xbox 360 with the just-released Final Fantasy XIII-2.

Each of these things is part of a picture perfect evening at home alone or with friends, and the center made it easy to enter to win. The nail polish is up for grabs to one lucky newsletter subscriber, the films will go to a Facebook fan, the board games to a Twitter follower, and the priciest prize to someone who goes to the effort of filling out a ballot at the center court display.

A simple concept with straightforward execution, but Billings Bridge really pulled off the details.

Ah, the French. Paris may be the City of Lights, but it’s also the city of love, launching thousands of romantic dreams. Just look at this, a wall dedicated to love, the phrase “I love you” written a thousand different ways.

LINK Real Estate is bringing that romantic spirit to its shopping centers just in time for Valentine’s Day this year, with French treats and atmosphere and a Love Wall for its shoppers. This one isn’t yet a work of art, though – it must be filled with messages of love between its shoppers first.

A French theme runs throughout the festivities, with decorations featuring giant French pastries and a reproduction of the Eiffel Tower in amongst celebrity singers, photo-shoots and give-aways. And warm-hearted shoppers who spend more than HK 500 (about 64 USD) on any of the days leading up to Valentine’s will take home red roses or a box of French macarons.

Shoppers at Link’s shopping centers should also tally up their receipts between January 20th and February 5th. The top ten spenders over that time period will win a candlelit dinner for two at Stanley Plaza on the big day, an exclusive Valentine’s Day gift, and the chance to win even more in an instant draw.

To those of us who are a tiny bit cosmetically-challenged, gorgeous makeovers seem more than a bit like sorcery. The Trafford Centre is taking the opportunity to recognize that wizardry with next week’s Beauty Magic event.

With Valentine’s Day just a few short weeks away, it’s the perfect time for shoppers to indulge in a pre-spring update to their personal styles. Each event that makes up Beauty Magic weaves a little spell craft into that goal. Like, for example, Spellbound: Selfridges fragrance experts demonstrate their most hypnotic lotions and potions, and shoppers can take on a bit of alchemy of their own with special mixology sessions that helps them discover their perfect fragrances.

The Body Shop and Lush are teaching shoppers to cast a few beauty spells of their own, with fairytale facials, miraculous makeovers and a big reveal of this year’s magical cosmetic secrets. Debenhams shows off supernatural (or super natural) looks. And John Lewis will teach shoppers to create illusions and glamours – or glamour.

This is also a great time to show off the center’s Magic Mirror. Shoppers can step in front and paw through different virtual outfits. Chanting “Mirror, mirror on the wall, which is the best outfit of them all” isn’t necessary, but it ought to be.

Finally, what bewitching event would be complete without a secret treasure? This time, shoppers can enter to win an Eve Lom prize package worth over £500. That will certainly add some magic to one shopper’s experience.

This weekend, Brentwood Town Centre opens its arms to recent immigrants in its neighborhood with the two-day MOSAIC Fair.

MOSAIC is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing orientation services for immigrant communities (its name stands for Multilingual Orientation Service Association for Immigrant Communities, specifically). With Brentwood generously hosting, the group has put together a thoroughly multicultural event that mingles great entertainment with vital information.

The event gives MOSAIC an opportunity to provide community members with information about free services and employment opportunities available to immigrants, and refugees. Those info sessions are scattered throughout the weekend, but the rest of the time is given over to pure joy. Capoeira, belly dancing, West African, Kurdish and Taiwanese dance groups, and Bollywood classes fill out just some of the entertainment. There’s also a group art project, story time for the little ones and a couple prize draws to round things out.

Sounds like a warm welcome for folks who are often left isolated in their own communities.

Seaway Mall’s food court and Chorus Niagara put each other on the global map in 2010 with a fantastic flash mob video that you may still remember. We covered it briefly right here, where you can also check out the video and add to its 36 million plus views.

So it’s great to see that the two are continuing their mutually beneficial relationship with the chorus’s 6th annual Singathon Fundraiser. For five hours on Saturday, February 11th, the chorus will return to the center’s food court for an encore performance.

The Singathon is a free concert, performed in front of a live shopping audience. For those five hours, they’ll perform works from their popular and classical repertoire, including – wait for it – the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah, the very work that brought them their great fame. Other local celebrities will stop by to act as guest conductors.

The Singathon is a huge boon to the chorus’s operations, bringing in as much as $54,000 with last year’s record-breaking performance. The funds that are donated over the course of the day are used to produce and promote the ensembles’ season, including four choral concerts. The popular annual event is also sure to bring plenty of fans to Seaway Mall to enjoy the show.

Oh, and while it doesn’t have quite the same viral cachet, here’s another downright adorable video of Chorus Niagara’s time at Seaway Mall, from last year’s fundraiser:

The media might be all “Super Bowl this” and “Super Bowl that,” but there’s another big football game in town: The Pro Bowl. This year, this best-of-the-NFL event takes place in Honolulu, at Aloha Stadium. To celebrate the big game, the nearby Royal Hawaiian Center is holding a big bash, a Pro Bowl Block Party.

“Block Party” is no exaggeration in this case, as the center is taking over a good portion of the street for the gathering. Shoppers can drop by to mingle with visiting Pro Bowl players, cheerleaders, and team mascots to the strains of local music. Renowned Hawaiian artists Teresa Bright, Sean Na‘auao and Kāpala are performing at the center’s Mele ‘Ailana – Music of the Islands stage. Marketing Trendz noted the center’s dedication to Hawaiian heritage last year, and this is just another great example of the way it weaves local culture into all its events.

To keep the party going all evening, the Center will also be hosting its Royal Hawaiian Center Beer & Wine Garden fin its Royal Grove. It will be serving the Official Pro Bowl Beer, Bud Light Lime, along with other drinks, and collecting partial proceeds for the Visitor Aloha Society of Hawaii.

Royal Hawaiian has another treat for Pro Bowl fans – in the lead up to the game, it’s holding on to the Pro Bowl Trophy. Shoppers can drop in to get up close and personal with the trophy, and maybe think good thoughts for their team and players of choice.

Yesterday, CRE Radio dedicated its talk show to the retail pop-up phenomenon.

Tactics Magazine’s editor-in-chief Myriam Beaugé joined host Howard Kline to discuss the trend, alongside guests Harold N. Tolchinsky, Esp., a veteran legal expert familiar with the negotiation of pop-up store leases; and Christina Norsig, founder & CEO of PopUpInsider.com, the first national online exchange for temporary or pop-up retail.

The panel delved into these issues:

• Advantages and disadvantages of pop-ups for both the landlord and tenant
• Differing pop-up uses and concepts, including marketing and test markets
•  New ideas and applications of the pop-up concept, including a pop-up mall and revolving seasonal pop-up stores
•  How to make this temporary concept more permanent

You can listen to a recording of the show by visiting CREradio.com.

For more information on CRE, the commercial real estate radio station, or to discuss a retail real estate issue you’d like to take to the air, contact host Howard Kline or producer Mike Durnerin.