Hitching your mall to a star

This is not an announcement on a gossip portal but an item of “news” that appeared on the website of a shopping centre in Gliwice. If you do not know who Małgosia is, she is Małgorzata Socha, a TV actress, who has been the ambassador of the Forum centre since 2012. The marketing team of the mall has previous experience when it comes to employing celebrities. Among those who have been the faces of the mall are actress Agnieszka Włodarczyk and TV presenter Magda Mołek. Patrycja Kazadi (an actress, singer, presenter and dancer) performs a similar function for the Osowa centre in Gdynia. Nowadays the world of celebrity is intimately conjoined to that of business. The norm for a shopping centre opening or even just the symbolic ribbon cutting ceremony is that it should not only be attended by the local parish priest but also by major or minor stars. If a centre is located in a large city, has a major investor and is itself large in scale – then it will also have a major celebrity attached to it. Certainly the most spectacular event of this type in Poland was the opening of the extension to Silesia City Center in Katowice, which was graced by the presence of the then most famous celebrity in the world. The person standing next to the parish priest was Paris Hilton, the heir of the Hilton hotel fortune, someone known for not doing that much and making a lot of money out of it. The miniature dog lover and home movie enthusiast proved to be an effective addition to the event: it was attended by over 200 journalists from Europe and the US. How- ever, it probably did not have much of an influence on the record sum of EUR 412 mln that was recently transacted in the sale of the complex to Allianz Finance. Smaller facilities, on the other hand, have to make do with minor league celebrities, such as the stars of reality shows. The task of such D-listers is to generate more revenue for the mall by publicising the centre on the various gossip websites that are often visited during lunch breaks in corporations. This is an inarguable fact: it does not matter how they present themselves to us, it is only important that they do so in the form of column inches and photos. The marriage of celebrities and the property market is also evident when it comes to selling apartments. Ads featuring former footballer Radosław Majdan have apparently resulted in a considerable increase in J.W. Construction’s sales. Edyta Herbuś, a dancer who advertised luxury apartments on the banks of Lake Zegrze north of Warsaw, implored us to ‘treat yourself to a little luxury’ (the slogan of the campaign) – but the results of this campaign could not be gauged since the project was never implemented. Nevertheless, perhaps it is possible to get still more mileage out of celebrities? And maybe it’s not even necessary to pay them to make money out of them? NEC IT Solutions has developed a face recognition system for famous people based on one used by police to identify criminals and terrorists. A data-base of famous people can be uploaded onto a system designed for malls, so when a celebrity enters a shop the assistant receives a notification on their computer, tablet or smartphone that a star has just entered. The technology makes it possible not only to recognise faces but also to input information onto the database on the star’s shopping preferences, the sizes of their clothes and shoes. The system is already being tested in malls in the United States and Great Britain, but in Switzerland it seems that they don’t have it yet. When Oprah Winfrey wanted to buy an expensive bag in Zurich recently, the assistant did not recognise her and advised her against the purchase because she thought she would simply not be able to afford it. In fact, Oprah Winfrey is currently worth an estimated USD 2.7 bln. As you can see such a system is needed, perhaps urgently. The question is whether such a concept would catch on in Poland. I’d hazard a guess that it wouldn’t. Everybody knows (with the possible exception of the men working in the property sector) that our celebrities are the masters of promoting themselves in borrowed outfits, which go straight back onto the hangers in the shop once the swanky parties they attend are over.