A San Diego retail center turns to a creative direct mail campaign to lure shoppers for the holiday season

By: Aaron Dalton

San Diego Santa just wouldn’t be enough.

Sure, city officials in San Diego knew they had a hit on their hands when they decided to give Santa Claus a Southern California-style makeover. But they also knew it’d take more than just St. Nick zipping into town on a speedboat while clad in shorts to make their holiday festivities a success.

That’s because the single biggest challenge to the city’s proposed “Deck the Palms” celebration was San Diegans themselves. Because the party was planned for the city’s tourist-attracting Seaport Village retail and entertainment complex, city officials worried that well-heeled residents would blow off the event as a draw only for visitors. There was also concern that the locals’ disinterest reflected struggles the 27-year-old seaside shopping hub has had in years past in distinguishing its holiday marketing messages from those of other retail locations.

“Tourism is huge for Seaport Village, especially during the summer, but we really wanted to focus our holiday marketing campaign on locals,” says general manager Terry Hall. “A lot of San Diegans say they love Seaport Village, but have not been here in ages. Deck the Palms’ was our big push to remind locals that we are not just a tourist place.”

To lure San Diego natives to the Dec. 3 celebration which featured the speedboat Santa, festive music, decorated palm trees and a “Fruitcake Chuck-N-Hurl” tournament in which contestants competed to see who could toss a fruitcake the farthest Hall and others began coaxing them with a series of warm invitations doled out via direct mail and other channels.

Her mail effort was ingenious and far reaching: She mailed fruitcakes to opinion leaders and local media personalities around San Diego, the desserts arriving with a postcard of a surfing Santa that read, “How far can you chuck your fruitcake?”

Hall also appeared on TV shows in the week leading up to the event, tossing fruitcakes herself. In addition, Seaport Village sent an e-mail blast that announced “Deck the Palms” to nearly 1,500 opt-in subscribers who’d registered on the complex’s Web site.

The campaign paid off. Seaport Village, whose one-of-a-kind shops peddle everything from mugs to hammocks to porch swings to surfboards, saw a 65-percent year-over-year increase in car traffic on the day of the event. Web traffic rose 26 percent on the Seaport Village site that November and December. The complex received more media hits for “Deck the Palms” than it did for all of 2005.

Seaport Village will hold its second annual “Deck the Palms” event this year and is contemplating extending the now-daylong celebration in the future. “It’s just really a feel-good event,” says Hall. “Since it’s been pretty successful, we want to grow it.”