New York Times featured blogger Kistin Hohenadel wrote a fascinating post this past July on the Mall of the World, an über-mall dubbed by the United Arab Emirates as the “First City Mall”. This massive project will take a decade to compete and cost the Middle Eastern kingdom a staggering 6.8 billion dollars. It will boast 20 000 hotel rooms, a 4.3 mile network of retail stores, and 8 million square feet of air-conditioned streets.
From a bCom perspective, the ridiculously huge investment in tourism alone invites speculation, yet I found myself drawn to an interesting marketing strategy deployed by the United Emirates: it insists that the Mall of the World is, in fact, a city.
Now why would anyone call a mall anything other then what it is? Well, I suppose the answer to that is both—from a marketing perspective—amusing and enlightening. The Mall of the World is billed as a city because the term “city” is much more refined than “mall”. Why? Because when one thinks of cities, one pictures elegant metropolitan skylines, whereas when one thinks of a mall, one sees their local strip.
Not that all malls are unappealing, far from it. However, the United Emirates has played a clever game with branding. I’ll use a duck and a swan as a metaphor. The Emirates will build itself the most marvellous duck ever seen; however, it has made certain to tell the world that it is building a swan, and a gloriously commercial swan at that.
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