Member-only story
Marketing | Brand Experience
How to Save The Mall From Annihilation
The mall was a social animal until it stopped trending.
I have a love/hate relationship with the mall. They always overwhelmed me with their sights, sounds, and smells. I was pretty quiet and laid back and the mall was opposite. However, this teenage wallflower learned how to become a social butterfly in their halls and I bet you did too.
The mall was truly invented in the 80s and 90s. It became a “right of passage” into pseudo-adulthood. It was documented as such in movies like “Mallrats”, “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, “Clueless”, and “Stranger Things”. They were not fully true-to-life representations–but that didn’t really matter.
Malls were packed full of tweens and teenagers and hundreds of big and little stores that my friends and I would duck in and out of for hours on a Saturday afternoon.
Malls did the “free samples” thing even better than Cosco. There were headphones and music players to listen to the latest single from Madonna, papers that you could rub on yourself to smell like you had the money for an Armani perfume, and sample lip glosses, and eyeliners to try on.
Germs- what are those?
