Len Mistretta | Desperate Malls Turn to Concerts and Food Trucks

Malls are fighting for shoppers with one thing their web rivals can’t offer: parking lots.

With customer traffic sagging, U.S. retail landlords are using their sprawling concrete lots to host events such as carnivals, concerts and food-truck festivals. They’re aiming to lure visitors with experiences that can’t be replicated online -- and then get them inside the properties to spend some money.

“Events draw people to come to the shopping center,” said Keith Herkimer, whose company, KevaWorks Inc., is working with big landlords including GGP Inc. and Simon Property Group Inc. to produce outdoor events. “They generate revenue for the owner and offer a chance for cross-promotion, so they can try and drive more customers into the stores.”

Mall owners across the country are grappling with record store closings and declining rents. Retail property values are down 3 percent in past six months, as all other types of commercial real estate showed gains, according to the Moody’s/Real Capital Analytics indexes. A Bloomberg gauge of publicly traded mall landlords has tumbled 15 percent in the past year, the worst performance among U.S. real estate investment trusts.

Amazon.com Inc. and other internet retailers continue to grow, while department stores including Sears Holdings Corp. and Macy’s Inc. have been closing hundreds of locations. Payless Inc., the discount shoe seller, is among the latest to announce a massive shuttering -- of 400 stores -- as part of a bankruptcy plan.

“We expect to see a trend of more closings,” said Carol Kemple, an analyst at Hilliard Lyons. “Most retailers, if they’re still standing in September, will probably try to make it through the holiday season.”

Creating Experiences
Retail landlords have already made a push toward experience-driven offerings by adding restaurants, movie theaters and activity centers for children. Many malls are also adding rotating stores around for only a short time -- known as pop-up shops -- that are meant to attract young customers who see shopping as an event.

Now, events are reaching beyond the malls themselves. Herkimer’s task is to bring crowds to parking lots with events that generate as much as $60,000 a week for mall owners from the largest outdoor events.

The idea is gaining traction. Next month, Simon Property is having the first carnival in its Round Rock Premium Outlets parking lot, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Austin, Texas. Similar events are being held for the first time at locations such as Central Mall in Port Arthur, Texas, managed by Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., and a Cheyenne, Wyoming, mall owned by CBL & Associates Properties Inc. In July, Simon Property’s Orland Square Mall, southwest of Chicago, will be holding its first parking-lot food-truck festival, with plans for live music performances, Herkimer said.
Movie Nights

Lisa Harper, senior director of specialty leasing for Chattanooga, Tennessee-based CBL, said the company has expanded its carnival business at many of its 87 properties over the last couple years. She and Herkimer have discussed the possibility of pumpkin patches in the fall months and adding movie nights to some properties. CBL’s Triangle Town Center, in Raleigh, North Carolina, is about to start its second mini concert and food-truck series, called Creekside Wind Down, Harper said.

Retailers rent the outdoor space in a structure that resembles their indoor leases, Harper said. While each deal varies, the agreements involve a base rent fee for the use of the space and a percentage payment after the event reaches a certain threshold. Department stores, which sometimes own or control their parking lots, are seeing more value in renting the space after many years of restricting their use, she said.
‘Stick Around’

“Events brings that additional traffic and also encourage people to stick around longer,” Harper said.

There’s no guarantee, of course, that people will go inside, said Tracey Hatley, director of specialty leasing for JLL Retail. But the events offer opportunities for cross-promotion. Customers receive fliers advertising stores or restaurants inside the mall or coupon books to help draw them in.

That works well for properties like the Santa Rosa Mall in Mary Esther, Florida, Hatley said.

“They are a property that’s struggling with occupancy, struggling with driving traffic to the center, so they love doing parking-lot events,” she said. “You can see it from the road and it gets people on the property.”

Simon Property representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Groceries, Doctors

Some malls are doing fine even without renting out their outdoor space, especially higher quality properties with upscale stores. They have been drawing visitors with grocery stores, medical offices and high-end restaurants -- all businesses that face less risk from e-commerce competition than traditional tenants. Some retail REITs are adding office space or apartments to their portfolios to diversify.

Sandeep Mathrani, chief executive officer of GGP, said at a conference this month that the perfect mall now would include one department store, a supermarket, an Apple store, a Tesla store and businesses that started out online, like Warby Parker, the purveyor of prescription eyeglasses and sunglasses. Clothing stores now represent about 50 percent of the average shopping center, down from about 70 percent, he said.

“Landlords are trying to give people reasons to come to the mall, whether it’s a Tesla charging station or getting local car clubs to host events in their parking lots,” said Alexander Goldfarb, an analyst at Sandler O’Neill & Partners LP. “It’s not a fun time to be either a retailer or landlord, but it doesn’t mean every single mall or shopping center is going to close. Far from it.”

And for some retailer landlords with better-performing properties, the industry’s turmoil could mean more opportunity.Len Mistretta
‘Enormous Opportunity’

“This very painful process will surely take more than five years,” Steven Roth, Vornado Realty Trust’s chief executive officer, said in a letter to shareholders this month. “It will also create enormous opportunity for those with the capital and management platforms to feed on the carnage.”

Urban Edge Properties, a Vornado spinoff, is one landlord adding to its holdings. The company is under contract to buy seven retail properties, with 1.5 million square feet (140,000 square meters) of gross leasable space, mostly in the New York City area.

Until malls can figure out how to bring in steady crowds, expect to see corn dogs and carousels in their parking lots, Herkimer said.

“If retail turned around and vacancy rates dropped again, and all the sudden these malls and shopping centers are full of tenants, I think there’d be a circle in the other direction,” he said. “They’d say, ‘We need the parking space for customers.’” Len Mistretta

Len Mistretta | Latest 'Furious' film opens strongly, especially outside of the US

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Universal's action thriller The Fate of the Furious hit the ground in super-high gear this weekend, taking in US$100.2 million ($140 million) on North American screens while roaring to record global revenues of more than a half-billion dollars, industry analysts estimated.

Exhibitor Relations said the latest chapter in Universal Studio's "Fast and Furious" series accounted for nearly two-thirds of North American revenues over the three-day Easter weekend, leaving previous frontrunner The Boss Baby in its dust with just US$15.5 million in sales. That Fox/DreamWorks Animation film has now grossed US$116.3 million domestically.

While the latest "Fast" opened strongly, the manic muscle-car-filled film - with megastars Vin Diesel and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson - made nearly a third less in its first weekend than the previous "Fast and Furious" chapter, which scored US$147.2 million.

But the new film had an exceptionally strong performance in the rest of the world, led by China, bringing in US$432.3 million. With North American sales added in, the estimated US$532.5 million global debut would break the record of US$529 million held by Star Wars: The Force Awakens, website BoxOfficeMojo.com reported.

"Beauty and the Beast" continued to draw viewers, earning $13.6 million in its fifth week out. The Disney blockbuster, starring Emma Watson and Dan Stevens, has taken in $454.7 million domestically while pushing past $1 billion

The animated Smurfs: The Lost Village from Sony came in next at US$6.5 million. That was half its opening take from a week earlier.

Holding fifth spot on North American screens was Going in Style. The Warner Bros. comedy, starring Morgan Freeman, Alan Arkin and Michael Caine as aging bank robbers, had weekend sales of US$6.3 million.

Rounding out the top 10 are: Gifted (US$3.0 million) Get Out (US$2.9 million) Power Rangers (US$2.9 million) The Case for Christ (US$2.7 million) Kong: Skull Island (US$2.7 million)

Len Mistretta | The big debate: Is 2017 the best time to be a marketer?

From creative programmatic and targeted content to emerging technologies like virtual reality and artificial intelligence, the sheer variety of ways to communicate with consumers makes 2017 an exciting time to be in marketing.

Unilever chief marketing and communications officer Keith Weed, however, would go a step further. Speaking at Advertising Week Europe last month, Weed argued that the rapid pace of innovation, coupled with the plethora of methods available to engage with consumers makes 2017 not only exciting, but actually the best time to be a marketer.

“I genuinely believe this is the best time to be in marketing and advertising, because so much is changing and it’s so exciting. I’ve never done a job this long before, but I’m not doing the same job as I was doing seven years ago. It’s radically changed,” he explained.

“To me the exciting thing is there have never been so many ways to engage with people in a two-way conversation. Making sure you’re on top of innovation and working out what’s going on is tremendous. I can’t believe there is anything more exciting just now.”

Exciting yes, challenging definitely. This is the era of fake news, ad fraud and dubious metrics. So far in 2017 high profile advertisers from McDonald’s to L’Oreal have pulled spend from Google and YouTube in fear their adverts might appear next to extremist content.

Consumers are also more engaged with brand messaging then ever. This proved to be the downfall of Pepsi’s latest campaign, which was pulled after a matter of days following a savage social media backlash accusing the drinks giant of co-opting the Black Lives Matter global protest movement.

The “always on” nature of the digital age has given consumers the tools to make their voices heard and have more control over content, notes Sulinna Ong, vice president of artist marketing at music streaming site Deezer.

She believes in 2017 any marketer worth their salt must understand how to utilise all the digital tools at their disposal to create meaningful engagement, which then gives them the opportunity push innovation and creativity up the agenda.

“New technology and the continued rise of social media have dramatically increased demand for authentic and exciting conceptual work, producing creative 360-degree campaigns that may otherwise have been flagged as “too risky” in the past. Now – more than ever before – the appetite for experimentation drives innovation,” says Ong.

This opinion is shared by Creative England marketing manager Rachel Graye, who believes the digital age has broadened marketers’ ability to build relationships with consumers.

“Digital advancements definitely make marketing more exciting. I see it as an advantage to have even more tools at our disposal to get closer to the consumer. Social and influencer marketing, for example, allows us to connect with people in a more meaningful way,” she explains.

READ MORE: Is digital an effective mass market medium?

“It also allows marketing teams to work more closely as different expertise needs to come together for it to work as a whole. Content marketing forces us to be more creative, which is a challenge and an opportunity to create something new and re-write the rule book – what’s more exciting than that?”
Increasing accountability

Marketing effectiveness is under the microscope like never before, putting teams under increasing pressure to deliver tightly defined KPIs that directly impact the bottom line.

It is for this reason 2017 brings with it more complexity and accountability, says Dixons Carphone commercial marketing director Jonathan Earle. He argues short-term thinking in the boardroom means marketers are not even given enough time to hold their nerve if the numbers are not coming in.

“It’s got to be immediate response rates and that can also add pressure, because campaigns could be launching new products or services, and it takes time to drive into people’s psyches what you’re doing. Sometimes the ROI has got to be immediate otherwise it’s a failure.”

That being said, Earle believes making marketers accountable for driving real business growth can only be a good thing, as it shows marketing is being seen as a revenue generator not a cost centre.

Len Mistretta | Ten nutrition mistakes even really healthy people make

Even when you try your best to eat well, it’s difficult to know everything about nutrition. I often talk with clients who believe they are making good choices and don’t realize that little oversights stand in their way of optimal health.
Here’s a list of 10 common but easy-to-repair nutrition mistakes.

You add whole flaxseeds to your breakfast

Flaxseeds are filled with omega-3 fats, fiber and lignans (antioxidants), which all benefit heart health. But whole flaxseeds may pass through the intestines undigested, which means you’ll miss out on the health benefits inside the seed. Buy ground flax seeds instead, or put them in a coffee or spice grinder.

You blend a nutritious smoothie, but it’s a calorie bomb

It’s easy to toss a combination of superfoods into a blender. Blueberries, cashew butter, chia, kale, bananas and coconut milk sound like a dreamy breakfast elixir, but these concoctions can quickly become calorie bombs. Keep smoothies in the 300-calorie range by serving smaller portions (about 8-12 ounces), using more vegetables than fruit, and by going easy on the high-calorie nuts and seeds.

You take your supplements with coffee

Caffeine from coffee can hinder your body’s ability to absorb some of the vitamins and minerals in your supplements, including calcium, iron, B-vitamins and vitamin D. And it’s not just coffee — beverages such as tea and cola contain caffeine, too. Enjoy your coffee about an hour before taking your supplements, and swallow pills with water instead.

You use regular canned beans for your meatless meals

Beans are an amazing source of fiber and protein, but canned varieties may have close to 1,000 mg of sodium per cup — that’s two-thirds of what you need in an entire day. Look for cans that say “no salt added” or “low sodium.” If you can’t find them, drain and rinse your canned beans, which will eliminate about 40 percent of the sodium.

To cut back on sugar, you cut out fruit

The top source of sugar in the American diet is sweetened beverages, not fruit. Sugary soft drinks have no beneficial nutrients, while fruit has fiber, vitamins and protective antioxidants. Plus, we don’t tend to overeat fruit, but do tend to drink too much soda. Consider how much easier it is to down a 20-ounce soda, as opposed to eating six bananas at one time. Both pack 16 teaspoons of sugar. Choose fruit and skip the soda.

You skip the dressing on salad

Vegetables contain fat-soluble vitamins A, E and K, and a host of antioxidants that require fat to be absorbed. If you skip the oil and vinegar, you miss out on key nutrients from the salad. Serve your greens with oil-based dressing, nuts, seeds or avocado to dramatically boost your body’s ability to soak up the veggies’ beneficial nutrients.

You trust claims like ‘low-fat’ and ‘sugar-free’

For many years, we’ve relied on label claims that tell us what our food doesn’t contain — fat, sugar, gluten. It’s more important to look at what the food does contain. Ultra-processed foods may be fat-free or sugar-free, but also loaded with preservatives or refined ingredients. Read ingredient lists and choose foods that are as close to nature as possible.

You drink almond milk for calcium but don’t shake the carton first

Milk alternatives made from soy, almonds, cashews, rice, etc. are often fortified with calcium and vitamin D. But the added nutrients don’t stay in the liquid very well and tend to sink to the bottom of the container. If you drink without shaking first, you can’t reap the benefits of the added vitamins and minerals. Shake well before serving.

You miss out on probiotics by buying the wrong type of yogurt

Yogurt is fermented milk, and fermented foods contain probiotics. So logic would dictate that all yogurts are probiotic-rich, but unfortunately that’s not the case. If yogurt has been heated or pasteurized, probiotics are destroyed and may not be added back. Look for the words “live active cultures,” or check ingredient lists for names of specific probiotics (lactobacillus acidophilus, L bulgaricus, etc.) to ensure you’re getting these beneficial bacteria, which aid digestion and support the immune system.

You refuel with sports drinks

Sports drinks are meant to replace fluid and electrolytes that are lost when you sweat excessively, and are suitable after endurance sports like a soccer game or marathon. But the extra sugar and salt in sports drinks are not needed for casual exercise with minimal perspiration. After a stroll, hydrating with water is the best choice. READ MORE.....

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/living/health-and-medicine/article139852758.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/living/health-and-medicine/article139852758.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/living/health-and-medicine/article139852758.html#storylink=cpy

Len Mistretta | Seven Tips For Running Your Business From Anywhere

Every morning, Noel Chandler wakes up at 5 a.m. to the sounds of the jungle. He sneaks out of bed, tiptoes past his kids' room as they sleep and meditates for 20 minutes. Then he tosses his surfboard in his Land Cruiser and drives down the road for his morning surf.

“Sitting [meditation] and surfing; it’s the best way to start the day," he says. He then heads back home to help his wife get the kids ready for school and dives into his work day. "It wasn’t always like this,” Chandler adds, "The year before we moved here was one of the darkest and most unhealthy 12 months of my life.”

In fact, his lifestyle was quite different than it is these days.

Taking Ownership

Chandler, a client of mine, is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and CEO and co-founder of Mosio, a healthcare research software company. Four years ago, the stress of building a company began taking its toll on his health and happiness, leading him to 70-plus hour work weeks of worry. “I was running a software company that improves the healthcare industry, yet I was incredibly unhealthy, overweight, depressed, and far from the best version of myself. It didn’t make sense,” says Chandler.

Something had to change, so in deciding what they wanted out of life, the couple and their two children moved to Costa Rica. The re-focus on priorities not only changed him personally, but it encouraged him to create something beneficial for everyone on his team. “It started with me, but ended up having a huge impact on the type of company I wanted to lead,” he adds. “I knew Mosio could be a successful place where work complemented life’s truly important currencies: health, happiness and time.”

Focusing On Lifestyle And Output

Since then, Chandler has lost 30 pounds, meditates and surfs almost every day. He and his business partner, Jay Sachdev, have created a culture focused on lifestyle flexibility and output rather than hours clocked. In July 2015, the company began working just four days a week. “This took our mission as a healthcare company to a new level. Our 'Health, Happiness and Hobbies' mantra enables us to hire easily and keep a dedicated team.”

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His advice for entrepreneurs looking to make the shift is as follows:

1. Take a personal inventory of your time, health and happiness. Look at what is most important to you and fulfill those needs. “You need to take care of yourself first or you’re not going to be able to help anyone else,” Chandler says. “Sacrificing the most important things in life now with the hopes you’ll get them after you’ve achieved certain milestones is a fool’s bet. Something always comes up,” he adds.

2. Create a business support network. Through advisors, mentors, coaches, or fellow entrepreneurs, surround yourself with support. “Choose people other than your significant other or business partners. You need people you can be real with — in a business sense — to help you tackle challenges.”

3. Hire great cultural fits. Find people prepared to work within an infrastructure of self-sufficiency and professionalism. “This is easier said than done,” Chandler says, “But those who are a good fit and value the format, step up. Those who aren’t find their way out,” he adds.

4. Trust the process. Create great systems and personal .   Read More......

Len Mistretta | How can we make pharmaceutical drugs less toxic to the environment?

The past few years have seen the advent of a new eco-scare: The unsettling afterlife of pharmaceuticals. Drug residues excreted by humans and livestock linger in our waterways, often for months, before decomposing. The effects of these residues are hard to isolate and poorly understood, but scientists have discovered hints of trouble. Some have found alarming numbers of intersex fish —that is, fish whose testes contain egg cells—in rivers laced with estrogens and estrogen-like compounds (from pharmaceuticals and other chemicals). Others have observed that anti-depressants like Prozac may disrupt frog maturation and hobble minnows.

As the Associated Press reported in a widely read 2008 investigation, even our drinking water contains traces of many drugs. The quantities are infinitesimal, and there is no evidence of harm to human health. But we don't know how chronic exposure to even the lowest concentrations of these compounds, in unpredictable mixtures, might affect us—precise testing of the long-term consequences is essentially impossible. Based on the precautionary principle, not to mention the intrinsic ickiness of drug-tainted water, vigilance is surely warranted. We have eco-friendly laundry detergent and nail polish remover, so why not develop greener drugs?

A handful of chemists are trying to do just that—drawing lessons from a few drugs that are green by chance while hunting for new strategies to shrink pharmaceuticals' environmental footprints. Enthusiasts such as Buzz Cue Jr. (a retired Pfizer scientist who now consults for the industry) and Klaus Kummerer (a German chemistry professor) publish papers and give talks at conferences, touting a new approach to pharmaceuticals that takes the post-toilet phase into account. While companies have done a good deal to reduce the environmental impact of drug manufacturing—cutting waste and using more innocuous solvents, for instance—they've done little to make the drugs themselves more eco-friendly.

Developing "benign-by-design" drugs poses a series of vexing challenges. In general, the qualities that make drugs effective and stable—bioactivity and resistance to degradation—are the same ones that cause them to persist disturbingly after they've done their job. And presumably even hard-core eco-martyrs (the ones who keep the thermostat at 60 all winter and renounce air travel) would hesitate to sacrifice medical efficacy for the sake of aquatic wildlife. What's more, the molecular structures of pharmaceuticals are, in the words of Carnegie Mellon chemist Terry Collins, "exquisitely specific." Typically, you can't just tack on a feature like greenness to a drug without affecting its entire design, including important medical properties. 

Yet there are some drugs that just happen to work well but with minimal environmental impact. The pancreatic cancer treatment glufosfamide is impressively biodegradable, as is valproic acid, an epilepsy medication. "Biologics," which include insulin and vaccines, consist of natural (as opposed to synthesized) compounds, so they break down easily in the environment. One of the greener drugs turns out to be that little blue pill: The human body fully converts Viagra into significantly less potent metabolites. * (Well more than half of the antibiotic amoxicillin, by contrast, passes through the patient unchanged.) Such drugs offer tantalizing clues that scientists may be able to apply to future formulas.

While trying to learn from these accidentally green drugs, scientists are also seeking novel ways to keep minnows off Prozac. Cue and others dream of a "magic switch" that would allow a drug to remain stable until its release into the environment, at which point—presto!—it would become biodegradable. One way to do this is to make drugs "photodegradable" with light-sensitive molecular triggers, which would cause the drug to decompose in the waste treatment plant. Another possibility is to design an inherently less stable drug, and affix it to a temporary stabilizer that would break off only after arriving inside the body. This research, however, is in the conceptual stages, far from reaching your local Rite-Aid.

Efforts to reduce drug dosages—a complementary tactic—have made more headway. Take, for instance, a treatment in development for osteomyelitis, a type of bone infection. Rather than inundate your entire body with antibiotics, the medication uses a special molecule to ferry the antibiotics directly to the infection site. Similarly, several new cancer therapies can target malignant cells with greater precision than ever before. And researchers continue to enhance "bioavailability"—the proportion of the drug's active ingredients that actually reach the patient's relevant tissues. All of these approaches permit lower doses without compromising effectiveness. This means fewer side effects for the patient—and for the planet. (A caveat: In some of these cases, though doses are lower, the drug is more potent, which could cancel out the environmental gains.)

Today, companies have little incentive to make greener drugs unless doing so coincides with other profit-enhancing benefits, like reduced side effects. Designing drugs is painstaking and expensive, and adding another criterion makes it that much harder. In Europe, however, policies are starting to apply pressure: In 2006, the EU issued guidelines that pharmaceutical companies must follow to assess the environmental risk of new drugs. And since 2005, a government-sponsored Swedish database has included information about the biodegradability, bioaccumulation, and toxicity of drugs, so that doctors and patients can weigh eco-friendliness along with other factors. The United States has also taken notice of the problem. Approximately every five years, the Environmental Protection Agency compiles a list of "contaminant candidates" for possible regulation. The most recent list, completed in 2009, for the first time singled out pharmaceuticals—nearly a dozen of them. This doesn't necessarily mean the EPA will regulate the drugs, but it's a signal to pharma companies that the issue is on the government's radar.

Until greener drugs hit the pharmacy shelves, we can take modest steps on our own to mitigate damage by keeping the offending substances out of our medicine cabinets in the first place. Many drugs are godsends, of course, but there's plenty of evidence that Americans probably take more than we need. Patients expect to leave the doctor's office with a prescription, and doctors oblige, dangerously over-prescribing antibiotics. The practice of doling out Zoloft and other psychoactive drugs in lieu of talk therapy has already sparked a backlash. If we could scale back gratuitous and harmful drug use, we would all be better off—and so might the minnows.

Len Mistretta | Latest type of Capsule and Tablets

Len Mistretta | Latest type of Capsule and Tablets from Len Mistretta