Mills Malls, Coca-Cola Tout Music Downloads

Mall manager The Mills Corp. and Coca-Cola Co. this week broke a back-to-school promo offering music downloads.

Back-to-school shoppers earn tunes from Coke and
Mills malls

The Here's the Download on Back-to-School campaign gives 10 free song downloads to shoppers who spend $150 in one day at a Mills' mall. Shoppers present their receipts and the cap from a 20-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola products to get a code they can redeem for songs at www.themills.com or a local mall's own Web site.

The effort runs through Sept. 30 at Mills' 27 malls. Targeted e-mail and in-mall signage support. MusicMatch, San Diego, handles downloads. Mills and Coke handle marketing support in-house.

The joint promo is first work since Arlington, VA-based Mills and Atlanta-based Coca-Cola renewed their five-year-old vending and joint-marketing contract for another five years, from July 1, 2004 through June 30, 2009. Coke keeps exclusive vending rights in Mills properties, and uses malls for consumer promos.

Mills and Coke will create annual national promos, and individual malls will work with Coke bottlers on local promos.

The back-to-school effort "truly resonates with teens' lifestyle interests," said Mills senior VP-marketing Ken Volk in a statement. "Partnering with Coca-Cola to create these types of promotions will enable The Mills to identify additional teen lifestyle trends and provide valuable feedback that can be used for development of future marketing initiatives."

Meanwhile, Mills also is launching Wannado City, an indoor theme park for kids aged four to 11, in its Sawgrass Mills mall in Sunrise, FL. The 140,000 square-foot park is a joint venture with Wannado Entertainment, Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Kids role-play in a variety of adult jobs at stations throughout the park. Wannado plans to build more play areas in other U.S. cities.