Sunway Malls emerge a big winner at the Malaysia Social Media Week (MSMW) Award recently, bagging two awards for two of its malls.
Sunway Velocity Mall is recognised as “Popular Shopping Mall” for the second time in a row and Sunway Putra Mall won the “Community and Social Welfare” category for the “Autsome is Awesome” initiative, earning the mall its first social media award.
Sunway Malls Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Tan, shares that there is a digital transformation plan in place for Sunway Malls and each malls’ social media platform plays an important role as an active engagement and listening tool.
“Our malls each have their individual Facebook and Instagram pages, and we do not have plans to integrate them because we believe they should serve their communities, their loyal shoppers and their purpose. Every time we run a new campaign or when we post an update regarding the outlets in any of our malls, we take into account the feedback, the engagement received and take the opportunity to understand the demands of our communities to translate them into our physical malls,” said Kevin.
With these new awards, Sunway Malls has won a total of seven awards just for its social media engagement and initiatives. Of the seven, Sunway Velocity Mall earned four of the awards, despite opening only in December 2016.
“Sunway Velocity Mall recognized the importance of building a strong and active social media presence from the moment it first opened its doors. Staying in touch with the latest trends in the social media world has enabled the mall to evolve, thrive and remain competitive, keeping abreast of current trends that enables us to maintain effective two-way communication with our followers and shoppers” said Danny Lee, General Manager of Sunway Velocity Mall.
Phang Sau Lian, General Manager of Sunway Putra Mall, said the mall’s Autsome campaign win is proof that they have found success in their community engagement efforts.
“The community recognizes our contribution to them through our Autsome campaign and many built affinity with us through this campaign along the way. If it’s not for their support, we wouldn’t have been able to gain the amount of publicity we have had, as well as the reach via social media, from national shores to international attention.”
“We also found that omni-channel communication helps strengthen the credibility of our messages and it is from a great mix of print, broadcast and online media that we gained more interaction from the community, be it through likes, reactions, comments or shares,” she added.
This award would be Sunway Putra Mall’s 12th recognition in just a span of four years.
Organised by Malaysia Social Media Chambers (SMC), a non-profit organisation dedicated to advocate and advance the discipline of credible social media, the MSMW Award is a platform that honours social and digital media enthusiasts in the nation.
Present during the event were YB Senator Yusmadi Yusoff, Parliament of Malaysia; Ned Mohd, Vice President of Malaysia Social Media Chambers and Syed Khalid, Freelance Social Media Analyst of Social Media Malaysia.
At the same time, Sunway Malls also won an award at the HR Asia Recruitment Awards for Best Onboarding Experience. Sunway Malls Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Tan, received the award together with the Human Resource department.
The award recognizes Sunway Malls’ efforts in welcoming new employees and ensuring they have a smooth transition into their roles in their first year of work with the brand.
Sunway Malls is gearing to be amongst Malaysia’s largest mall owner-operator as existing projects and those in the pipeline now stand at 7.7 million sqft NLA and that figure is planned to be increased to 10.2 million sqft NLA in the next few years to come. The malls are Sunway Pyramid, Sunway City, Sunway Velocity Mall, Sunway Carnival Mall Penang, Sunway Putra Mall, Sunway Big Box Village Iskandar in Johor, Sunway Giza Mall Kota Damansara and Sunway Citrine Hub, Iskandar in Johor.