SM Xiamen's ZACG Summer Vacation, a co-created space built for Gen Z ACG culture fans, has been named the winner of the 2026 CCFA Golden Lily Award for Best Practice of Marketing Innovation at the 2026 China Shopping Center Development Summit, June 25, 2026.

It started in the summer 2025. SM Xiamen went deep into ACG culture with an immersive "ZACG Summer Vacation" campaign that built for Gen Z, young people who love what they love and show it.

To speak directly to specific niches, SM Xiamen brought in heavy-hitting intellectual property (IP) debuts — the South China premiere of GUTI & GUTA LAND, the first pop-up store in Fujian for SPY×FAMILY, plus pop-ups for Jay Chou and ANI Hub, etc. Together, they built a strong lineup of IP experiences under one roof.

The mall also turned an inside corridor into a dedicated "ita alley," complete with makeup rooms. Working with top local anime event brands like ANE and Ziyu Comic Con, as well as local idol groups, SM Xiamen ran comic conventions, special meet-and-greet events, dance contests, goods bazaars, map challenges, and NPC parades — basically a one-stop party for the whole summer.

The numbers speak for themselves. From late June to late August 2025, SM Xiamen saw 6.67 million visitors, up 5.43% year-on-year, with 13-28-year-olds making up 68% of the traffic. Tenant sales rose 12%, driven in part by the map challenges that connected anime goods tenants across the mall and brought tens of thousands of shoppers in. Organic social media posts and media coverage reached nearly 22 million people in total.