Sandton Gate Central wins at SACSC Footprint Marketing Awards 2026

Sandton Gate Central walked away with a Silver award at the 2026 SACSC Footprint Marketing Awards, announced today by the South African Council of Shopping Centres. The award recognises the precinct’s marketing campaign, which set out to sell a place people would use every day rather than a destination to visit occasionally.

Marketing a routine, not an event

Where most centre launches lean on scale and spectacle, Sandton Gate Central’s campaign was built around the idea of ‘Time Well Lived’, reframing the precinct as a stop woven into people’s existing routines: before work, during a lunch break, on the way home. That positioning shaped everything from the tenant mix to the media plan and was carried through by a marketing and leasing team led almost entirely by women, spanning development, architecture, brand and leasing.

The campaign leaned heavily on data to prove the model. Digital acquisition was anchored by Google advertising, which delivered more than a third of total leads, with remarketing alone accounting for over a fifth; evidence, the team argues, of strong brand recall among an audience that had already engaged with the precinct once.

Turning tenants and media into campaign partners

Rather than carrying the marketing spend alone, Sandton Gate Central built a pre-launch programme around its own retail partners. A R100 000 competition, funded through tenant prizes, put real product from the precinct’s own restaurants and retailers directly into customers’ hands.

Retail tenants and partners collectively contributed over R500 000 in sponsorship value across the campaign, alongside street pole advertising and a coordinated social media push that extended the launch beyond a single moment.

On the earned media side, the team distributed curated media boxes to local personalities and content creators, a considerable investment designed to generate organic coverage and conversation ahead of launch, rather than paid placement.

That was paired with an on-the-ground event for the Women in Property Network, where more than 70 media, brokers and industry guests toured Sandton Gate Central ahead of its completion, turning a construction-phase building tour into a credible industry moment.

A campaign built for a precinct, not a mall

Sandton Gate Central forms the second phase of the broader Sandton Gate Precinct on Winnie Mandela Drive, following the completion of Sandton Gate Tower’s office component and The Terrace’s 136 residential apartments.

Abcon Group Marketing Manager Caley May says the award reflects a deliberate shift in how the precinct was sold from the outset: “We were never trying to convince people to make a special trip. The whole campaign was built to show that this is a place already on their route, so the marketing had to earn attention through relevance and data, not just spend.”

The SACSC Footprint Marketing Awards are judged annually on marketing effectiveness, innovation and measurable economic impact within South Africa’s shopping centre industry and the 2026 awards received entries from more than 2000 shopping centres across SA.

About Abcon

Abcon is a bespoke developer of quality spaces, with a consistent commitment to excellence across every market segment, from premium commercial environments to large-scale residential developments. Abcon’s role extends beyond buildings: to improve the urban fabric, contribute to the betterment of surrounding communities, and take proper care of people, infrastructure and the environment.