Unnerved by forecasts of grim holiday sales, malls are pulling out all the stops to try and get shoppers in the door. The Los Angeles Times reports at the Beverly Center in Los Angeles, aerialists twirl 80 feet off the ground as escalator riders gawk.
The mall has bumped it’s holiday marketing spending up one third from past years in hopes of encouraging a “spillover effect” in which customers come solely for the special events but leave with lighter wallets.
“Every resource that you can imagine has been deployed,” said Jeff Brown, the mall’s general manager. “It’s just this big, grandiose, epic sort of show, and it’s based on capturing the escapism that people were looking for in the 1930s when the country hit hard times.”
Photo by LA Times.