A pop-up own-goal

Simple really. You’ve got a flagging shopping centre where tenants are proving a mite hard to come by, so why not do the right thing and put in a few pop-up stores that will lift the feeling of empty units and inject some fresh, new, creative blood into the retail mix.

That, or perhaps a version of it, must have been the thought process that went through the minds of the powers that be at Whiteleys in Bayswater, in central(ish) London. The outcome is a first floor on which there are some very good pop-up stores of the kind that restore your faith in the ability of design to create engaging retail environments on a shoestring.

There is a problem however. There are still a few units that remain unoccupied, even allowing for the brace of pop-ups that are now in place for the next few months. So what’s the solution? Equally simple. Put up banners in the windows of the empty shops that state “New pop-up shop opening soon” and hope that shoppers won’t notice the rather crude sleight of hand that is involved.

Great: job done then. Well, not entirely, because hang on, aren’t pop-up stores supposed to, errr, pop-up? If you know that another one’s coming soon the guerrilla like nature of this part of the retail spectrum is immediately undermined.

In fact, it becomes something of an own-goal in marketing terms as the element of surprise disappears and the pop-up to be becomes just another part of the familiar ‘coming soon’ wallpaper-meets-hoarding that has now been adopted up and down the land.

None of this is to decry what has been done at Whiteleys, because the pop-ups that have appeared are as good as anything of the type that you’ll come across. It’s just that if you want to destroy a perfectly good idea - way to go.

So here’s a suggestion for marketing and PR people in shopping centres anywhere.

Pop-ups are a good idea and they are a cheap way of ensuring that your centre looks fresh with almost no cost (well, other than lost revenue through not renting at ‘market rates’ that is), but if you are going to embrace this, make sure that you don’t tell people about it until you actually have a pop-up tenant confirmed and ready to open and trade. Follow this and you’ll have something to talk about.