Nevadan at Work: Marketing exec strives for sense of community

Jaimesen Mapes, since high school, has had a singular focus that drives him.

"I knew immediately I wanted to get into marketing, in high school," said the marketing director for Town Square Las Vegas.

As a student, Mapes joined Distributive Education Clubs of America, a marketing group for teens. He focused his efforts then to gain as much knowledge about the industry as he could before heading to the University of Redlands in California and subsequently the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He even eyed sports marketing, his specialty, with a laserlike focus.

Boy was he wrong.

A baseball pitcher, Mapes already had signed papers to transfer to UNLV when an injury ended his sports career. He couldn't bear the thought of being away from the athletics department, so he asked for a job there, and eventually became the school's director of athletic marketing and advertising.

Today, Mapes heads the marketing department of one of Las Vegas' largest retail centers, Town Square.

Since joining the retail center's staff in 2007, Mapes rose through the ranks to become marketing director in 2011. His department is responsible for at least 65 major events at the center annually, not counting recurring programming such as Movies in the Square or Storytime in the Square.

Mapes will be busy in coming months as he prepares for the opening of Stoney's Rockin Country and the Current Day Spa. And while events slack off during the triple-digit-temperature summer months, he and his marketing coordinator are now busy planning for the holiday season and their 2013 budget.

"I picked out Santa's outfit last week and candy for our Town Scary event. Ordering $15,000 worth of candy is always fun," Mapes explains. "Now is when you're planning for the busier months. Once September and October hit, we'll have three events a week."

Question: What was it like working in the UNLV athletic department?

Answer: It's kind of a crash course in marketing. It's the difference between live television and recorded shows. You're doing in-game promotions, you're in charge of halftime entertainment; the opening ceremony. If something goes wrong, it goes wrong in front of thousands of people. And you quickly learn to be prepared and to present the best possible scenario so those issues don't arise.

Question: Did anything ever go wrong?

Answer: We were dedicating the Thomas & Mack floor to (former UNLV men's basketball coach) Jerry Tarkanian (at halftime of a UNLV basketball game.) The whole thing was built on the lights going out and everybody doing the old intro when Jerry was the coach, the shark clap. The lights were controlled from a separate building and they had to flip the switch on and off. It was a little bit outdated. There's a cool-down period because these lights are extremely bright and very old, so there's 10 minutes we have to have for the lights to cool down before we can turn them back on. The lights go down, everyone's in a frenzy, and we're about ready to unveil the court and we need to turn the lights on, the lights don't go on. The system fried. All the anticipation is built and we couldn't get the lights back on for 15 minutes. It delayed the game.

Question: What's the most challenging aspect of your work at Town Square?

Answer: Because we're positioned, locationwise, on the south Strip, it's both a blessing and a curse, because of where we're spending our budget. Our goal is to create that gathering place for Las Vegas, a sense of community, which is the reason why we do the special events and nonprofit work. The challenge is being local-centric and being on the Strip and having the tourist market on your doorstep, you can't ignore those tourists who are coming to Las Vegas. You're kind of taking one budget and splitting it two different directions. How you approach marketing to locals is very different than how you would to tourists.

Question: What trends are you seeing that are affecting your event-planning decisions?

Answer: What we're seeing is that the consumer is much more savvy than ever before. Their ability to have access to a product in a store before ever getting to the center is larger than it's ever been. You can look at that product online; try it on in a virtual dressing room. Therefore, the challenge is to keep that consumer coming to your property. I think marketing professionals have to work harder and smarter. No longer can you just take money and throw it at advertising.

Question: How is the center doing, trafficwise?

Answer: As for sales-per-square-foot, we're happy to say we're seeing double-digit growth over last year. We've been lucky to see significant sales increases since we opened and that can't be said for a lot of properties, especially those that opened when we did. November 2007 was not the ideal time to open a 1.3 million square-foot shopping center.

Question: To whom do you look for guidance in business?

Answer: I knew that I wanted to be in marketing, but retail marketing was not my ultimate goal. ... I think the single biggest influence, the person who helped me the most, was the former vice president of marketing for Turnberry Associates, Yamila Garayzar. She is the queen. She's a wealth of knowledge, she's been in the industry forever and she's held quite a few different positions. She is to retail what I am not. ... She was very good at bringing out my skills and adapting them to the industry.

Contact reporter Laura Carroll at lcarroll@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4588.