The Spectrum Awards bring together the top regional winners of SACSC awards programs like the Footprint Marketing Awards and the Retail Design and Development Awards.

This year’s winners were each judged the best in their category. They included Mooirivier Mall, with the Retail Design and Development Award; Brightwater Commons ‘Going Green’ campaign (which we’ve covered parts of in the past) for the Shopping Centre Marketing Excellence Award; Cattle Baron for the National Retailer of the Year Award; and Life Landscapes for National Service Provider of the Year Award.

Congratulations to everyone who took home a Spectrum Award!

Last week, a Vivienne Westwood pop-up shop made its entrance at Westfield London (whose site seems to be down at the time of publishing). The shop sells t-shirts designed for Fashion for Relief, an organization that brings the power of the fashion community to causes that need it. The t-shirts retail for £40, and funds raised from their sales go to The White Ribbon Alliance. The shirt designs include statistics about Haiti earthquake relief, and the pregnant and lactating women that need the assistance of The White Ribbon Alliance.

Supermodel Naomi Campbell unveiled the t-shirts at her Fashion for Relief show earlier in February, and she helped out with sales by signing 10 of the shirts to be sold at the pop-up shop, and showing up at the shop last weekend to promote the cause. Hopefully a recent controversy involving the notoriously mercurial star and a New York cabbie won’t hurt sales for this great cause.

The call to action brought hundreds of visitors to Glades Shopping Centre, where they bravely scaled the mountain in relay. Sort of. They scaled a climbing wall, true, but they made the distance: 7200 m, the distance required to climb to Everest’s summit and back to its base. And while many have perished attempting the real Everest, the Glades event was a a friendly, fun challenge for all.

Unsupervised teens are a challenge for a lot of malls, but it’s great to see a mall invite them in for a productive, fun event. Working with your teen population can bring great rewards.

The Santana Row bridal guide highlights retailers at the center that can make a woman’s special day even better. From bridal-wear to venues, with nearly everything in between, the shopping center has something to offer. Not all the choices are obvious, but rather they provide a good mix of the traditional and the eclectic, with something to offer everyone.

And the cherry on top is their bridal contest, which is the “It’s Every Little Girl’s Dream” bridal shower up for grabs. The winner will be treating herself and her three nearest and dearest to an overnight event, with champagne, brunch, 50-minute massages, manicures and pedicures, and more. To help out with the wedding prep, the winner will also receive gift cards to Priscilla of Boston, Cara’s Cupcakes and Club One, teeth whitening, a tux for the groom, photos and jewelery.

It’s not quite a “Dream Wedding” package, but for the bride who already knows what she wants, this might just be the perfect fit.

The iPhone app gives attendees a whole host of features at their fingertips. It contains a full agenda with detailed information about each session. Every exhibitor is listed, and a map pinpoints each exhibitor’s booth on demand. Attendees can also sign in to talk about Fusion on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and they can view a full list of attendees.

Just in case, there’s also a full program PDF, GPS directions to the hotel, and contact links for the conference, the ICSC and Mobile Fringe. It’s just about everything a conference attendee could wish for, all in a neat little digital package. We bet we’ll see more apps like this in the future.

Bring Back Our Mall Gift Cards is a website put together by the malls to inform shoppers about the situation, and to ask them to take action by sending letters to their MLAs.

Now the shopping centers report that shoppers have flocked to their cause. In just three weeks, over one thousand letters to Nova Scotia MLAs have been collected at guest services or sent through the website. It’s the results the malls were hoping for, but they couldn’t be positive their shoppers would side with them when starting this campaign. It remains to be seen whether the government will agree to the changes the malls hope for, but it’s great to see that their shoppers are behind them.

Five artists around the world are taking Skype with them on their journeys, and creating art from messages from Skype users everywhere. Users are asked to set their message free at a new microsite. Messages are sent to the artists, who create them using light, graffiti, carving and juggling.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882)

We’ll look at just a few more finalists today. There are many more, and they’re all deserving. We wish we had time to cover them all. Hopefully you’ll be seeing them at Fusion.

PREIT is a finalist in Cause Marketing for The Gift of Music. It worked with the nonprofit Musicopia to organize a donation drive for musical instruments, sheet music, stands and other badly needed items to help young people with an interest enjoy the rather expensive art. The nonprofit reaches 75,000 students in about 150 schools, organizing programs for genres that aren’t often explored in school classes, like African and latin music.

Macerich is a finalist in the Sales Promotion category for The Great Denim Event. Timed to coincide with Back to School, the event asked shoppers to donate gently used (and likely outgrown) jeans to charity. In return, shoppers received a coupon book to help them with their Back-to-School shopping. Shoppers were also given tips on their best fit for jeans by representatives from local retailers.

Finally, Northgate is a finalist for Grand Opening, Expansion and Renovation for “Rediscovering Northgate.” After an 18-month renovation, Northgate held a celebration lasting two weekends, coinciding with the arrival of Santa and the lighting of the center’s Christmas tree.

Good luck, everyone! We hope to see you there.