What: The Mall Group received Gold awards for Location-Based Marketing and Experiential Marketing, plus a Bronze for Communications and PR, at the Marketing Excellence Awards 2026 organised by Marketing-Interactive.

Why it is important: The recognition continues a sustained run of industry awards for The Mall Group over the past year, spanning technology, corporate excellence and now marketing.

The Mall Group won three awards at the international Marketing Excellence Awards 2026, organised by Marketing-Interactive, recognising its ability to create innovative marketing strategies that connect the brand with modern consumers. The Gold Award for Excellence in Location-Based Marketing went to "Beyond Borders: A Global Rewards & Partnership Ecosystem," while a second Gold, for Excellence in Experiential Marketing, recognised "Monchhichi x The Mall Group: The Great New Year First in Thailand Event." A Bronze Award for Excellence in Communications and Public Relations was given for "Monchhichi x The Mall Group: The Great Happy New Year 2026."

The Marketing Excellence Awards 2026 is a marketing awards platform that recognises outstanding campaigns and strategies from leading brands and organisations. The Mall Group's approach centres on developing experiences and communications that align with continuously changing consumer behaviour, integrating creativity, data, technology and customer insight to build campaigns that raise awareness while connecting the brand with lifestyles. The company frames the wins as another step in its ongoing commitment to elevating the retail business by connecting Brand, Experience and Customer, and creating new experiences suited to consumers in the digital age.

IADS Notes: The Mall Group's latest wins continue a pattern of recognition for its marketing and technology initiatives over the past year. The group received two international awards for digital transformation and customer-experience leadership at the International Finance Awards 2025 (Press Release, February 2026), Thailand Corporate Excellence honours for its Siam Paragon Retail joint venture (Press Release, December 2025), and recognition for its AR Navigation and i-Reserved Parking services at the Asian Technology Excellence Awards 2025 (Press Release, September 2025). These accolades accompany an expanding data-driven loyalty ecosystem: the group's shift to experience-led retail rests on a loyalty programme exceeding seven million members, AI-powered personalisation, and co-branded payment partnerships (Retail News Asia, May 2026), while a more recent campaign used M Card loyalty data to design segmented, lifestyle-focused activations for female shoppers (The Nation, August 2026). This history situates the Marketing Excellence Awards 2026 wins within a broader, sustained strategy of blending technology, data and experiential marketing to build cross-border rewards and partnership ecosystems.

The Mall Group reinforces its marketing excellence by winning three awards

What: For the fifth year running, Breuninger is bringing four star chefs from Baden-Württemberg into its (karls) kitchen restaurant, with live show-cooking sessions running through 22 October 2026.

Why it is important:  It shows how a department store turns fine dining into a recurring, brand-owned event format that builds loyalty year after year rather than a one-off promotion.

Breuninger has opened the fifth edition of "Rausch der Sterne," its recurring culinary partnership pairing fine dining with everyday retail. Around 130 guests attended an exclusive six-course dinner at the (karls) kitchen restaurant in Breuninger's Stuttgart flagship, prepared jointly by four Michelin-recognised chefs from Baden-Württemberg — Malte Kuhn of Malte's "hidden kitchen," Klaus Buderath and Benedikt Wittek of Restaurant Seestern, Andreas Widmann of Restaurant Ursprung, and Franz Feckl of Restaurant Landhaus Feckl — alongside Breuninger's own kitchen chef Christina Fiorentino and its confiserie team, with wine pairings from Weingut Aldinger.

Following the launch event, signature dishes from the four guest chefs are being rotated into (karls) kitchen's regular menu, with each chef appearing for a live show-cooking session in the restaurant's open kitchen on selected dates between 29 September and 22 October 2026. Michael Neef, Breuninger's Director of Food & Beverage, said the concept is designed to make Michelin-level cooking approachable within customers' everyday routines. With more than 20 self-operated gastronomy outlets across Germany, Breuninger positions in-house dining as a core, deliberately recurring part of its retail experience.

IADS Notes: Breuninger's fifth edition of "Rausch der Sterne" extends a now well-established pattern of using gastronomy to animate its flagship stores. The retailer's own Spring/Summer 2026 campaign paired fashion with haute cuisine across a multisensory, omnichannel format (Fashion United, March 2026), while a city-partnered fashion-and-food festival in Freiburg showed the tangible footfall and dwell-time gains such events can generate (Freiburger Wochenbericht, September 2025). The guest-chef format itself mirrors moves elsewhere in the sector: Manor in Geneva brought a Michelin-recognised chef's street food concept into its in-house restaurant to sharpen its dining offer and draw new audiences (Press Release, April 2026), and Dior's Paris flagship restaurant earned its first Michelin star under a dedicated culinary programme, reinforcing how fine dining is increasingly used to signal prestige and deepen customer engagement in retail settings (WWD, March 2026).

Breuninger marks five years of culinary partnership with Michelin-star chefs

What:  Boyner is expanding its collaboration with the Community Volunteers Foundation (TOG) into a year-long culture and arts program at the Hatay Youth Campus, funded in part by shopping bag sales revenue.

Why it is important: The program shows Boyner scaling a one-off NGO collaboration into a sustained, multi-year commitment, echoing the structured cohort model it built with UNDP Türkiye's She LAB program.

Boyner is extending its collaboration with the Community Volunteers Foundation (TOG) to the Hatay Youth Campus, transforming last year's SanatİST project into a year-long culture and arts program. The first gathering, an "Impact Camp" held between September 1 and 4, brought together 23 young people from Hatay and other Turkish cities for workshops, expert-led talks and peer exchange, with participants expected to carry what they learned back to their home cities. A portion of revenue from shopping bag sales in Boyner stores will fund cultural and artistic activities at the campus throughout the year, which plans to reach more than 400 young people through workshops, gatherings, trips and music events.

Aslı Demir Gönül, Boyner's Deputy General Manager of Marketing and Brand Management, framed culture and art as central to the company's long-term social benefit approach, describing the aim as giving young people a space to create, learn and develop ideas together. TOG General Manager Seçkin Karataş said the Hatay Youth Campus offers a living space for young people to reconnect and design a shared future, and that the expanded collaboration with Boyner will support social solidarity through year-round production processes.

IADS Notes: Boyner's collaboration with TOG at the Hatay Youth Campus extends a pattern of building long-term social investment and brand identity through cultural and creative programming rather than one-off activations. The retailer's earlier partnership with UNDP Türkiye on the She LAB sustainability-leadership program, reaching 250 young women through mentorship and hands-on training (Press Release, February 2025), shows a comparable model of NGO collaboration scaled to a defined cohort over time. Boyner's broader emphasis on creativity and culture as brand pillars is also visible in its Art Pieces initiative, which has expanded artist collaborations on limited-edition tote bags into a fifth series (Press Release, June 2026), and in a dialogue-free brand film built around themes of shared belonging (Press Release, August 2026). Together, these examples place the Hatay Youth Campus partnership within a broader Boyner strategy that combines NGO collaboration, artist-led creativity and cultural storytelling to generate both community impact and brand narrative.

Boyner brings young people together with culture at the Hatay Youth Campus