The Cancer Alliance of Help and Hope is holding a spooky Charity Ball on Oct. 30. The Charity Ball is the non-profit’s biggest fundraiser of the year, and it got the process off to a great start with a kick-off gala at The Gardens Mall last week.

The event was a great success, bringing several hundred people together for a great night that benefited a great cause. The gala featured appetizers and desserts by BRIO Tuscan Grille, a restaurant in the center, a Bloomingdale’s fashion show featuring fall fashions modeled by cancer survivors, a cash bar, a 50/50 raffle, a silent auction, and DJ music. Kids under 12 got in for free and had plenty to keep them busy in the Kid’s Zone, with cupcake decorating, yoga instruction, arts and crafts, food and lemonade.

Tickets to the event were $20, and shoppers who preregistered were entered to win a BRIO dinner for 10. An additional $50 donation put shoppers in the running for a $500 mall gift card, a flat screen TV, or a Tiffany bracelet.

It sounds like a great start to the fundraising season for the Cancer Alliance of Health and Hope, and a fantastic celebration of the finer things in life.

Taking a break from shooting a Gillette commercial, Roger Federer manages a brilliant trick shot, knocking a bottle off a crew member’s head without a moment’s hesitation. Gillette luckily gets the shot on film and uploads it to YouTube, scoring millions of hits in just two weeks.

Sounds too good to be true, and it probably is. The bit about millions of views is true: the video was uploaded on August 16th, and now has over 6 million views on its official upload. The shot itself is probably fake, though Gillette claims it was completed in a single take. But isn’t that the most exciting part? Blog posts have gone up dedicated to decrying the video as fake and showing off some of Federer’s top serves. YouTube commentators passionately argue both sides. It’s a low-stakes controversy that stirs the blood and gets sports fans excited.

Real or fake, there are a lot of winners involved. Federer comes off looking like a champ, Gillette gets the views, and even the British Skin Foundation gets a plug. And no one’s going to complain when (or if) the truth comes out.

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.

• Supermarket bag use cut nears 50% target: Reusable bags become increasingly viable. (BBC, UK)
• Debt Forces Oriental Trading Into Chapter 11: A major supplier of mall promotional items for Simon and other centers enters bankruptcy protection. (Multichannel Merchant, US)
• Aussies spending $1bn for Dads’ Day: Australian shoppers go all out for Dad. (Inside Retailing, AU)
• Firms are profiting from group think: Group coupon sites like Groupon are paying off for businesses great and small. (Crain’s New York Business, US)
• Retail’s fresh start: Whether we blame good weather or nervous shoppers, back-to-school hasn’t been great this year. (Market Watch, US)
• Blockbuster appears poised for mid-September bankruptcy filing: There doesn’t seem to be any other way out for the beleaguered video retailer. (Dallas News, US)
• The Brazilians are coming — to a store near you: Brazilian shoppers are fueling retail growth throughout Latin America. (Reuters, US)
• Survey shows consumer resilience as UK retail sales volumes rise again: Retail sales in the UK have hit a three year high. (The Herald, UK)
• How Snooki Got Her Gucci: The Dirt on Purses: Sneaky marketing 101 (The New York Observer, US)
• Simon Property Completes Mall Acquisition: Simon has purchased 21 malls from Prime Outlets Acquisitions. (The Street, US)
• In recession, Goodwill becomes a force on the retail scene: Straddling the line between vintage and thrift, Goodwill expands. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, US)

Image: Christmas @ Eden 2007_S12570, a cc licensed flickr photo shared by Ennor

“People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.”
Russell Baker
(1925 – )