Youth engage in mall logo design

UMC marketing manager Luleka Ngqulunga says, "This stems from research that revealed that the majority of our customers are between the ages of 35-60. The aim of the competition was therefore to target new shoppers from the youth market."

To ensure this youth focus, the criterion for the competition was that only fulltime students from the nearby Mangosuthu University were eligible to submit entries.

Creative aspects

To attract this profile of entrant, Primedia Lifestyle Group's advertising and branding agency, Red Pixel was responsible for the creative aspects of the campaign and set about designing a grungy, industrial look and feel poster that invited students to design the mall's new logo and stand in line to win R20 000.

Entries were whittled down to five finalists and Red Pixel then helped to refine each entry. The subsequent winning entry was chosen based on its graphical representation and rationale as to why that design was chosen. It features the vernacular payoff line, "Azidle ekahaya!" or "Come support your own."

UMC falls under the portfolio of Primedia Lifestyle Marketing Service's Busisiwe Mahlaba who cites the competition as an excellent example of weaving local personality, culture and language into a mall's marketing material to ensure that it is locally relevant and meaningful.

"Elements such as strap lines with a vernacular reference have massive community appeal but first prize is to get the community involved in the actual creation of these elements, as was the case with this initiative."