The purpose of the Date Nights campaign was to brand Adams Morgan as THE destination in DC for a “date.” We set up multiple date lineups and offered suggestions that would appeal to a diverse audience. From girls night out or a mother-daughter date night to a first date or anniversary – we assembled a “grid of dates” on our website which provided suggestions, incorporating dozens of our businesses.
Marketing
Sub Topics: Marketing
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.
King of Prussia District’s Restaurant & Retail Week Benefitting Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
In 2014, King of Prussia District launched King of Prussia Restaurant Week. From the beginning, the restaurants insisted that the event benefit the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. King of Prussia District facilitated the partnership, creating branding/marketing and getting restaurants involved. In 2018, we launched a corresponding retail event and in 2020, the events grew bigger as we launched the Community Champion program and partnered with the school district.
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).
Placemaking Summit 2019 Opening Master Talk Presentations
Campus No. 805 is an award-winning adaptive re-use project that converted a former middle school campus into a mixed-use entertainment experience with multiple local breweries, restaurants, entertainment options and a public green space. Join us as we kick-off the inaugural Place Branding & Placemaking Summit with a multi-stop reception where attendees will get to experience why “school’s out forever” and full-time fun is the new curriculum at Campus No. 805.
Placemaking Summit 2019 Closing Master Talk Presentations
Closing Master Talk with Rob Robinson, Managing Principal, Urban Design Associates (Pittsburgh, PA), Anna Lowder, Co-Founder, Matter Design Co. (Montgomery, AL), Nick Lasater, Co-Owner & CEO, Rocket City Digital (Huntsville, AL), and Josh Yeager, Co-Founder, Bright Brothers Strategy Group (Philadelphia, PA).
Strengthen Your BID Through Branding
How do you brand something as complex as a city? Two BIDs talk through how their successful rebrands not only modernized and unified their identities, amplified the effectiveness of all of the organization’s endeavors, increased the recognition the BIDs got from stakeholders, and saved time and money – but also accomplished something larger. Rebranding positioned both BIDs to move from identifying their communities as a “place” to representing a “destination” – answering the questions “Why visit here?” “Why live here?” and “Why invest here?” No matter the size of your BID, these branding insights will make your work more effective.
Standout Place Branding
Change is constant in our line of work, and when change continually occurs in urban places and spaces, the stories that we tell about them must hold true. But how do you change the narrative of place and what does that entail? For urban place managers, branding a district / place conjures more questions than answers: how much will it cost? How many stakeholder groups do we need to involve and who? How long will it take? What are we actually branding? What is our brand? Will this even make a difference? In this panel, practitioners will detail the process of refreshing or enhancing a brand, including insights into the somewhat complicated and contentious process of deciding when to take action, how to set budgets, who to work with and how a brand refresh impacts more than just marketing collateral – it also affects the entire built environment and visitor experience.
Downtown Houston Market Research Summary: Attracting Residents
This sample research report was conducted to help The Houston Downtown Management District develop a “lifestyle profile” for downtown Houston. Through surveys of downtown workers and residents in downtown adjacent neighborhoods HDMD aimed to determine: 1. what was missing from downtown 2. which unique features of downtown are currently most important and 3. what would be most attractive to target audiences.
Strategic Re-branding & Communication Effort
With archaic branding that only focused on one main street, the Downtown Tempe Authority (DTA) desperately needed to create a brand that encompassed their entire downtown, including residents, businesses, and other stakeholders. In addition, the brand elements needed to communicate to various audiences how they could interact, engage, and experience the place. The results of re-branding brought back many groups that were once alienated from downtown Tempe.
Creating a Physical Sense of Place by Enhancing Infrastructure
By seeking improvements to landscaping, pedestrian lighting, wayfinding, visual identity, and event infrastructure, the Cherry Creek North BID leveraged a massive infrastructure project to quite literally build a new sense of place for the area. Countless hours of stakeholder and community outreach were undertaken in addition to hiring the foremost experts in design, architecture, and planning.
Making the Switch: Branding the Organization
In 2011, the Downtown Denver Partnership acknowledged the need for a cohesive brand for downtown Denver and embarked on a branding campaign that encouraged residents, visitors, and employees to enjoy all that downtown Denver had to offer. The downtown Denver brand was already beginning to surface organically as the city emerged from an economic downturn, and the Partnership embarked on creating a strategic marketing strategy to more intentionally encapsulate the place brand.
Driving Retail Growth with Holiday Pop Up Shops
With over 50,000 square feet of retail space available in a six-block radius, the Downtown Partnership of Colorado Springs, CO stepped in to attract new temporary, pop-up businesses during the holiday season as a means not only filling vacancies, but attracting customers to help preserve the retailers that still remained.
Downtown Dallas Retail Recruitment Program
A summary of the marketing, planning and incentivisation efforts used in recruiting Downtown Dallas’ various retailers.
The Importance of Campus Edges to Community
How a thoughtfully designed campus edge, and its seamless connection to the community adjacent to campus, contributes to the overall success of a town/community.
College Town Summit 2019 Master Talk Slides
Slides from the master talks sessions featuring Downtown Durham Inc.’s Nichole Thompson, David Dixon from Stantec, and Justine Hollingshead, Chief of Staff and Assistant Vice Chancellor / Packapalooza Planning Team Co-Chair, NC State University Division of Academic and Student Affairs.
Alley Events & Activation
Downtown alleys—traditionally characterized as dirty and dark—present a unique opportunity for transforming unusual spaces into memorable public experiences. The Chicago Loop Alliance (CLA) pursued a broad placemaking program to activate underutilized public spaces (such as alleys). Termed “ACTIVATE,” the initiative transforms iconic Loop alleys into pop-up urban experiences. The events feature art, music, and more in unique urban settings.
Economic Development 101 Tale of Three Cities – Cleveland, Milwaukee, New Haven
The urban place management organizations in New Haven, Milwaukee, and Cleveland all developed unique strategies to enhance economic development in their downtowns. They took different approaches (board retreat, organizational strategic plan, BID renewal and satisfaction survey) to identify their new economic development focus. New Haven focused on retail and storefronts, Milwaukee on office and new businesses, and Cleveland on business recruitment and retention.
Transforming Downtown Transit Streets
Great streets are the hallmark of successful cities. In cities that lack underground rail, surface street buses are the lifeblood of downtown mobility, and one or two streets can act as dedicated busways. In addition to carrying people to and through downtown, these transit streets are also important pedestrian corridors. Learn how Denver, Minneapolis, and Seattle are reinventing the way they do transit and manage their transit streets.
Sponsorships, Marketing and the Controlled Chaos of Events
This session is designed to aid districts in navigating the ins and outs of event sponsorships and marketing. Learn about knowing what types of events best suit your districts, when and what to market, as well as how to capitalize on sponsorship opportunities. Case studies include Pittsburgh’s “Picklesburg,” Wilmington’s hurricane recovery events and Hartford’s multitiered space activation.
My Bad Reputation: Overcoming a Place’s Negative Perception
They say perception is reality, but often negative perceptions about a place obscure positive changes, inhibiting growth and success. Whether the narrative is about high crime rates or inauthentic tourist traps, changing perceptions can require a multi-prong effort. Using case studies from a variety of locations, panelists will discuss how tools such as audience research, re-branding and press strategy can highlight local assets and reshape the narrative.
Craft Data-Informed Persona in Places of All Sizes
Downtown associations know their attraction and retention results are due in part to their marketing efforts. But how do you produce content that helps your downtown stand out from the rest? In this panel, downtown regions like Bozeman, MT; Los Angeles, CA; and Memphis, TN will discuss how marketing their narrative started with understanding the unique pieces of their story – namely, their data.
Making the Case: Market Analysis Scenario Workshop
Today, downtown and urban district professionals need clear and concise data to strategically inform management and investment decisions. This workshop begins with a baseline understanding of the data that can be useful for understanding the local market, including how to retrieve the data and how to supplement the data with local knowledge. Structured as a practicum, participants will then work in small groups to apply the methodologies and analyses to build a comprehensive district profile.
Global Trends 2020: What’s Next for Downtown
P.U.M.A.’s award-winning Global Trends Report has been a go-to resource for downtowns for more than a decade. This debut of the 2020 edition will provide insight on what’s next for downtowns given shifts in demographics, lifestyles and competition. The panel will also provide provocative recommendations on how downtown managers can adapt to and get ahead of trends shaping our cities.
Everybody Innovates Here: Accelerating Innovation and Entrepreneurship Downtown
This session will show how to develop a higher-impact, sustainable, inclusive and more effective way to accelerate innovation and entrepreneurship downtown through programs, places, nerve centers, districts and ecosystems. Two case studies will illustrate these concepts: a downtown district in Metuchen, NJ with over $100 million of investment since 2016, and Makerhoods, innovative live-work space, also in New Jersey. These examples will show how innovation is achievable by everyone.
Building a Social Media Strategy for your Downtown
What’s your social strategy? A question we’ve all been asked, but have no simple answer. From understanding your goals and audience to maintaining your brand, come learn tools for crafting a social strategy to fit your downtown and organization.
City of Arcades
FOR Cardiff has struggled to identify its USP and wanted to address this by using one of the city’s best assets to attract new and old visitors, the beautiful arcades. They utilized FC Ambassadors to gather feedback from businesses, researched other independent shopping campaigns, and identified a need to first win-back Cardiff shoppers who were already aware of the arcades and encourage new visitors and customers.
Great Plates of Downtown Fort Collins
Great Plates of Downtown Fort Collins is an annual regional dining promotion with a local focus. This two-week-long celebration showcases Downtown’s culinary culture and serves as a community fundraiser, with 100 percent of proceeds going to the Food Bank for Larimer County. In 2018, Great Plates raised over $106,000 in two weeks. Overall, the promotion has raised more than $545K: each dollar donated is equivalent to $5.00 worth of food, for a grand total representation of almost $2.7 million dollars.
DowntownDC’s District of Fashion Runway Show
The District of Fashion runway show seeks to align DC with industry-standard practices in fashion and highlight the unique talent located in the DC area. The project is designed to elevate and support the local retail and fashion industry. With high retail space prices and tepid support for the industry, this event sought to give the fashion and shopping retail industry a needed boost both for the perception of the industry and for consumers who spend money at brick and mortar retailers in DowntownDC.
Milwaukee Public Market: An Economic Catalyst for Milwaukee and the Historic Third Ward
Determining the location for the Milwaukee Public Market was integral to the city’s revitalization. Being able to create a linkage between the different Milwaukee neighborhoods, specifically the third ward to downtown, could draw residents and tourists into the city in a way that had proven difficult for years. The Market has acted as a business incubator for local entrepreneurs who have since been able to grow and form community connections that provide opportunities for continued success.
Ease Into Midtown
Midtown Association sought the creation, and execution of a parking and transportation communications plan that would invite a target demographic, females 25-45 years of age, into Midtown by presenting an ‘easy’ outlook of various transportation options available. The campaign highlighted transportation methods and parking in Midtown and showed the ease of using technologies associated with on-street and off-street parking and alternative transportation including bicycling, transit and walking.
Downtown Block Party
The Downtown Block Party was developed as a celebration of Downtown Iowa City’s night economy as a unique differentiator from other commercial nodes in the region that could be an attractor to those of all ages looking for something different. The event relied on key partnerships to entertain attendees with activities including a sand volleyball court in the street, silent disco, dueling pianos, video game tournament, barn dancing by senior citizens, a drag show and main stage with music acts.
Dupont Circle BID Brand Launch & Implementation
The Dupont Circle BID catalyzed renewal of the area’s public infrastructure through $25 million in streetscape upgrades and an innovative plaza deck over an avenue dividing the retail core. Flowing from Dupont Circle, it will be an exciting, programmable gathering space for the entire city. Its marketing roll-out includes a content-rich website, social media platforms, colorful street light banners, monthly newsletters, transit advertising, a neighborhood guide, and materials for retail brokers.
She Tempe
In an effort to revitalize and refresh the district’s street-level appearance, the Downtown Tempe Authority (DTA) decided to wrap the fourteen news racks throughout the downtown district in works of art. Eleven local female artists were asked to submit works that portrayed females. This project celebrates local creative talent, enhances a sense of place and helps create an engaging and vibrant pedestrian experience in Downtown Tempe.
Homemade In Downtown
Downtown Sioux Falls, Inc. (DTSF) and local advertising agency, Fresh Produce, collaborated to create a comprehensive marketing campaign that featured co-op advertising opportunities for DTSF business members. Strong communication between DTSF, Fresh Produce, and members – as well as support from key stakeholders – made it possible to develop creative that pleased the large majority of members, and led to high satisfaction among participating businesses.
Downtown San Diego: Create the Future
The Downtown San Diego Partnership spearheaded an initiative in partnership with Grizzly Creative, IVC Media and The San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation to create and launch a brand for Downtown San Diego. It defined a narrative and visual language for downtown that positioned our urban core positively and attractively by elevating what’s already happening there and demonstrating what a tremendous opportunity we have to create the future.
Downtown London’s Free Comic Book Day
In 2015, Downtown London began to hear concerns about the amount of people lined up on the sidewalk and the limited space for people to safely participate in Free Comic Book Day. Many of the attendees are children, and most people dress up as characters from their favorite movie, book, or video game. For three successful years now, Downtown London closes Dundas Street and programs it each year with a street festival of comic artists, clubs and performers.
CollaborEAT
CollaborEAT is an annual event of CityBuild Denver, an initiative of the Downtown Denver Partnership. Each year, it transforms an outdoor public space into a dining experience for 250 CityBuilders. The event is designed to educate and inspire, while providing a space for attendees to engage in innovative thinking around the opportunities and challenges facing Denver. There is no other event in Denver like CollaborEAT, which combines tactical urbanism, education, networking and city building.
A Taste of Colorado 2018
A Taste of Colorado, a free Denver tradition, continued its 35-year tradition of being the largest free admission food and music festival in Colorado attracting over 500,000 attendees over the three-day weekend. A Taste of Colorado has something for everyone with over 50 food vendors, 175 marketplace vendors, a Kids Zone experience with arts & crafts and a children’s entertainment stage, and the elevated music experience with a main stage featuring over 25 musical acts.
Old Town Scottsdale Rebrand
The Old Town Scottsdale Rebrand started as a straightforward marketing and communications assignment to promote the Old Town area to in-state residents for the purpose of increasing local foot traffic. The perception was that Old Town was too touristy and didn’t offer much for our local residents. What began as a simple marketing strategy of how to best present Old Town’s best offerings turned into a much deeper brand exploration that would redefine a city.