Communications Archives - International Downtown Association

Communications

Engaging the Media

Learn from about the evolution of local media ecosystems and the power of proactive relationships with journalists. Clarify the differences between earned, paid, and owned media with examples of proactive, reactive, and earned media.

Proving Your Value: Measuring & Reporting

Reporting is a hot topic for many PMOs, but consolidating data into informative formats is challenging. Identifying key metrics, and managing data spanning various departments is critical.

Advancing Places: Engaging the Media

Learn from two seasoned professionals on the evolution of local media ecosystems and the power of proactive relationships with journalists. We will clarify the differences between earned, paid, and owned media, focus on earned media, on earned media and share examples of proactive and reactive/crisis communications. Join the conversation around different strategies, including having an in-house communications team versus working with an agency.

High Performance Digital Marketing for Destination Districts

Trends in marketing come and go, but a robust interactive website continues to act as the foundation for digital content marketing. This presentation covers the results of Geocentric’s 2022 Downtown Digital Survey, a summary look at downtown district websites and how they perform across some key measures of audience, acquisition and behavior.

Become Your Own Hyperlocal Digital News Outlet

As traditional newsrooms continue to shrink and media habits change, now is the time to fill the void and create a hyperlocal news outlet inside your organization, moving beyond press releases and conventional blog content to develop the multimedia newsgathering and storytelling operation your community needs. 

Explorer in Chief

Prior to Covid, the Downtown Alliance launched the Explorer in Chief contest, calling for one-minute video submissions for the ultimate summer dream job. For the Explorer in Chief, this would be a life-changing opportunity to work as a travel ambassador in one of the world’s high-profile tourism destinations. For the Downtown Alliance, it would be a game-changing way to showcase Lower Manhattan as an extraordinary place to visit, work and live.

Advancing Places: Accessible Ways to Connect With Your Audience

In this session, you will learn about different types of podcasts and cable television programming produced by three IDA member organizations all with varying budgets and in different geographic regions of North America. From shoestring budgets all the way up to working with professional production teams, attendees will hear about lived experience and explore producing their own programming.

Friend or Foe – How to Effectively Manage the Media

Marketing is central to our work as downtown leaders. Understanding how the media works is key to getting your message out and making sure that your community is represented in the best light possible. Learn how to position yourself as a thought leader and become an effective and persuasive communicator.
Panelists:

Changing Cultures, Brands and Names

As communities and districts evolve, place management organizations must follow suit. This panel will explore initiating and managing change from the inside/out on both the organizational and district level. The panelists will share the positives and challenges of renaming and expanding districts, rebranding efforts, expanding programmatic focus, measuring impact and building an inclusive organization culture.

Advancing Places: Downtown Recovery Strategies and Storytelling

Downtown leaders and marketing professionals around the world have been exploring new recovery strategies and storytelling. The depth and range of techniques used to elevate one’s district vary. In this session, speakers will share a variety of tactics from their own experiences and attendees can examine which approaches might work best for their district.

Advancing Places: Get Your District Back Online With Digital Advertising

There’s never been more need to quickly bring our districts back on track. Digital advertising is the most efficient channel for increasing foot traffic, event attendance, and sales… but only when it’s done right. Learn how Downtown Norfolk used digital ads during the pandemic to become the country’s top travel destination, shattered Restaurant Week records, and emerged with extraordinary momentum.

Virtual First Friday

Downtown Ventures’ Virtual First Friday promotion boosted community support for creative-sector retailers affected by COVID-19 closures. When Downtown Colorado Springs’ monthly gallery hop was canceled, Virtual First Friday bridged the patronage gap, pushing online sales as well as social media attention.

Creating Confidence for Returning Workers During COVID-19

To ensure workers were comfortable returning to the office in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDBIA worked with our members to develop a Best Practices for Return to the Office report. Advocate for indoor mask mandates, and we created promotional videos about returning to the office and public health measures.

Downtown Download Webinars

From the start of the pandemic our members, residents, and BID properties were clamoring for reliable information they felt they weren’t getting from existing channels. There was confusion about government relief programs, business shutdowns, liability if someone gets sick, and changes to city permits and fees. So we created a free webinar series that directly connects our audience with top government, public health, and business decision makers.

Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) Recovery Compass

The DTLA Recovery Compass was a multi-wave tracking study, surveying downtown stakeholders on a range of issues, trends, and sentiments about the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on Downtown Los Angeles. A total of eight survey waves, each with 200-300 responses, were collected throughout 2020. The survey was promoted via the DCBID email distribution list and paid, targeted advertising on Facebook and Instagram.

Shattuck East Renaming Project – Kala Bagai Way

The intent of the engagement process was to create a dynamic, transparent, unique, accessible and low-cost process to receive submissions from the community. Renaming a street is no small feat, especially in a City with a politically active population and a City that has a world renowned University with stellar faculty, graduates and staff.

Leading Through Uncertainty: The First 100 Days

During the first 100 days of the pandemic, uncertainty and fear loomed large. Our community invested decades of hard work and millions of dollars to revitalize our area. That generated momentum became a palpable force of its own, but the pandemic threatened to bring it to a halt. Leading through Uncertainty: The First 100 Days was Downtown Arlington’s immediate, four-pronged response to the new needs of our district.

Advancing Places: Working with Media and Managing PR Campaigns

Communications is an important part of our work in urban place management. Two experienced practitioners, both downtown leaders with extensive marketing & communications backgrounds, to learn how they are building relationships with media, what the media is looking for in news stories, and how to go beyond traditional media relations to take control of your district’s story. We’ll also dive into crisis communications and some tips on planning and executing an effective PR campaign.

Advancing Places: Building on Recovery for Urban Place Management

As the COVID-19 vaccination rate increases, we are finally seeing more and more activity and vibrancy in our urban cores. What are the actions that UPMOs can take (or continue taking) to ensure that downtowns, city centers, and urban districts can recover more strongly?

Advancing Places: The Virtual Public Realm

In a hybrid era of virtual and physical, how can urban place management organizations showcase their assets and developments? Learn how the Downtown Center BID (DCBID) in Los Angeles developed a virtual tour platform to showcase the downtown real estate market, its most significant properties, public spaces, and development projects, to investors, developers, brokers, prospective commercial and residential tenants.

Advancing Places: Marketing Your Downtown as Open for Business

Every downtown and district is struggling with how to support the businesses under their purview to provide much-needed foot traffic, sales and revenues, but the fact remains that we’re all “open for business”. From ongoing campaigns targeting locals, tourists and visitors to larger 40,000-foot view strategic planning, in this session you’ll learn from two very different place management practitioners and the strategic consultancy working with both of them to deploy data and technology.

Advancing Places: Crafting Recovery Messaging

The new year has brought with it many of the same challenges, but that doesn’t mean your outward messaging needs to be doom and gloom. 2021 is bound to be complicated and exciting for districts. How do we bring positive messaging back to cities and districts that are unsure about what is next? What strategies can marketing and communications professionals use to jettison economic anxiety for business owners, residents and visitors? Where do we begin crafting year-long messaging for stakeholders operating week-by-week?

Advancing Places: Branding Strategies

There are many reasons for an organization to initiate a branding project, such as creating a new district, merging with another organization or overhauling dated brand material. This webinar will discuss how to approach and implement an organization-wide brand identity effort, from initial research on target audience to finalizing external marketing collateral. Hear from two downtown practitioners who have led branding projects in large and small organizations to gain valuable insights into how positioning and messaging can amplify a newly formed brand strategy.

Advancing Places: Communications

During these challenging times, communicating with stakeholders throughout your community is more important than ever before. Hear from different panelists and learn about specific communication tactics that have been employed to help support their district during these uncertain times. Come away with ideas to apply in your city.

Project Spotlight: Engage Your Community

The Longest Table has welcomed local Grand Forks, North Dakota residents to sit down for a free meal in a welcoming environment with people they may not have known, to foster stronger connections, exchange stories, discuss community challenges and spur civic innovation. The Longest Table has been successful in engaging underrepresented populations in important civic conversations; providing everyday citizens with tools to be active participants in creating the community they want to have.

“Getting the Word Out:” Strategically Sound District Communications

In a world of packed calendars, dizzying social feeds and overflowing email inboxes—on top a global pandemic, no less—how can districts successfully deliver messaging, reach their target audiences and negotiate the needs of stakeholders who want district support in “getting the word out?” Speakers from communities large and small, share hands-on, proven tactics of how to strategically marry audience, channel and results.

Content Strategy: Expand Your Reach Through Strategic Content Creation

Today’s marketing professionals must create their own content to reach wider audiences and gain deeper interest in their brands. This session will identify the basic components of creating a content strategy plan. Panelists will offer a variety of approaches to content creation, including sharing successes and failures. Participants will examine what content model approaches might work best for their district.

Why So Serious? Follow the Fun to Find Your Voice

Could you pick your marketing voice out in a crowd, or do you sound like every other BID in your city? From newsletters, to signage, website copy and annual meeting videos, stop taking yourself so seriously and start having fun! Using both case studies and the basic tenets of improv comedy, BID communications experts will help make the mundane memorable.

Join Grow with Google to Empower Your Community with Digital Skills  (Grow with Google)

You’re already doing great work in your community and Grow with Google wants to help. Grow with Google helps people across the United States gain digital skills to grow their careers and businesses. Join us to learn how you can gain access to presentation materials, resources and hands-on help from Grow with Google’s team, all completely free of cost.

Coordination and Communication Lessons Learned from Civil Unrest

Urban place management organizations around the would have faced many challenges during 2020. Many districts have seen significant protest activity as many around the world speak up against inequality and for social change. This session will discuss coordination and communication lessons learned from Minneapolis and Washington, DC. No one city has all the answers in how best to prepare and respond, so this session will also feature time to learn from each other.

Digital Marketing During and After COVID with Geocentric

From closings and re-openings, to streeteries and social distancing guidelines, there’s never been so much information that needs to be communicated. Join Geocentric for a brief discussion of what’s working now, and how to plan for bringing people back to downtown.

Main Street Grand Forks: The Longest Table

For the past two years, beginning in 2018, the Longest Table has welcomed local Grand Forks, North Dakota residents to sit down for a free meal in a welcoming environment with people they may not have known, to foster stronger connections, exchange stories, discuss community challenges, and spur civic innovation. Through conversations with strangers around the table, attendees are encouraged to listen attentively, share openly, consider thoughtfully, and dream big.

Downtown Tempe’s Micro-Influencer Program

People assume that to be influential on social media you must have thousands and thousands of followers. However, marketers have discovered that the true effectiveness of influencer marketing comes from engagement. In 2017, the Downtown Tempe Authority alongside Bright Brothers Strategy Group, launched a micro-influencer pilot program in an effort to increase authentic engagement and ramp up BID marketing efforts across the board.

Building Brand, Increasing Awareness, Celebrating Diversity: Financial District Online Interview Series

The Financial District Online Interview Series was created to leverage the diverse business and employee voices in Toronto’s Financial District to build the district’s brand, increase employee awareness of the Financial District BIA and celebrate the diversity of the area. Rather than create a new marketing/branding campaign, we used the people in the district to build the brand and speak to the strengths of the area while engaging area employees on social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn).