Located in high traffic areas at key Simon centers, digital directories take shoppers on a journey through a 65", LCD, full HD touch screen. The interactive maps display the fastest route for shoppers to take to store locations and center services. The directories come to life when a shopper walks within a few feet of the screen.
With over 1.2 billion monthly active users, Facebook Messenger has an audience that matters. The Shop Simon messenger bot offers users localized information about stores, restaurants, deals, events and amenity details at more than 200 Simon centers. Shoppers are easily guided to find the answers they need quickly. Live Chat with a local representative can be initiated within the bot as well.
Across more than 500 digital directory screens for the 2017 holiday, a fun augmented reality segment was added to surprise & delight shoppers as they passed by these interactive shopper touch points. Shoppers were magically transformed into a reindeer, complete with auto-zoom and real-time motion tracking to make the virtual transformation seamless bringing smiles to all.
A first for the U.S., the Simon team is yet again re-inventing what the mall of the future will look, with the help of a great partner - Disney Junior. The play area at La Plaza Mall was massively transformed into an immersive & interactive experience, complete with two unique zones that are age-level targeted. One for toddlers and another for children up to the age of 10 years old. This free amenity gives another glimpse of what our centers will continue to evolve to.
Simon has teamed up with leading mobile fuel service provider, Booster, to bring first of its kind convenience to shoppers Monday through Friday. Shoppers at Great Mall in Milpitas, CA can download the Booster App and have high quality fuel delivered to their vehicle while they shop.
Across all centers, the innovation team at Simon set out to help shoppers better understand what brands are carried and what categories of products are covered at many of it's leading retailers. This new way of looking for brands and categories is already being quickly adopted by shoppers as they better try to understand what products stores carry in their local center.
Helping the Chinese based tourist better understand where Simon Shopping Destinations are located here in the U.S. and what stores & amenities are offered within each center was the goal that this latest app-within-an-app delivers upon. For WeChat app users, the Simon mini-program now allows convenient and accurate center-level information to be browsed all from within the native WeChat app experience, in both Mandarin and English.
For the 2017 holiday, the Simon team decided to add a conversational-style buying guide feature onto Simon's already successful Facebook Messenger chatbot. This localized gift guide is operated by none other than Santa, in which it aides shoppers in finding the perfect present, all the way down to specific micro-categories and the best stores that carry those types of items in the mall.
To brighten holiday spirits in 2017, Simon's innovation group launched an interactive app that let shoppers of all ages experience the North Pole like they've never have before, by stepping thru an augmented reality (AR) doorway to a magical winter wonderland and become one of Santa's Helpers in a virtual reality-like (VR) world. Within this immersive mobile game that had to be played on-center, players were able to win a free prize even for completing the game.
Set in one of America’s most iconic shopping centers (Roosevelt Field), The Edit is a scalable retail platform for both budding and established brands to pilot new products, new dimensions and new territory. Think strategic product curation, disruptive positioning and online efficiency— all within a brick and mortar space. Design-centric, experience driven, and completely transitional, The Edit is the place to discover new.
Partnering with both the Apple Maps and Mappedin teams, Simon is now able to update all of its' shopping center indoor maps that appear within Apple Maps in a near-real time manner. This simplifies the ongoing maintenance and upkeep efforts and helps ensure that Simon's indoor maps that are contained within the Apple Maps app are always up-to-date, accurate and useful.
Virtual personal assistants, like Amazon's Alexa & Apple's Siri, are a transformative force in the digital world, as more and more search volume heads to voice. As an industry first, Simon is now leveraging Alexa via a custom skill that enables shoppers nationwide to locate a nearby Simon center, find a store of interest and even get top deals happening now at that prefered center, all by just saying, "Hey Alexa, ask Simon..."
Building on the successful interactive mapping platform that Simon pioneered and deployed across all of it's centers, this latest release brings to life the ability to fully localize the experience in a deep and meaningful way. This way, Simon is able to best serve it's shoppers in their preferred local language.
Taking this strong loyalty program to the next level was the goal. To do so, a complete overhaul was performed that involved total digitization of all legacy, print-only VIP Savings Passport offers which greatly enriched the online value proposition, utility and overall user experience of this core shopper offering.
Simon, a global leader in the ownership of premier shopping, dining, entertainment and mixed-use destinations and an S&P 100 company, is constantly innovating to create the best shopping experience for our shoppers.
