Are You An Ostrich or Actively Driving Ratepayer Revenues? ↗

EDITION 16 / WEEK 32

As we bid farewell to October and Halloween 2020, we have to note that this past month has been the busiest and most momentous of the year. The IDA conference was a blast. We’ve welcomed new clients to the roster, and shaken our heads at those who still aren’t using data and business intelligence to strengthen their districts and DMOs. The world hasn’t stopped spinning. There is a clear divide between organizations that are making things happen for their merchants and businesses, and those still paralyzed by the pandemic; blaming COVID for their inaction, and loss of revenues and assessments. Read on to learn about industry movers and shakers, plus a few lessons to send 2020 out with a bang!

– Your Bright Brothers Team

“Winter is coming” as the GoT catch-phrase goes, and this can mean BIG business for your district’s restaurant, retail and hospitality purveyors. But are you coordinating efforts to funnel foot traffic between shops and eateries? And are you using your analytics to determine what your constituents need and want, because NOBODY is reading your ubiquitous, and utterly-ignorable COVID-19 website warning. Get the scoop on the coming season and don’t leave your stakeholders out in the cold. Treat your district to these simple and easy-to-execute tips, tricks and recommendations from Bright Brothers in our latest Recovery Trends Report for November 2020.

Everyone loves a goat. They’re so great, there’s even an acronym named after them! And this inventive food hall in Downtown Baltimore is using baby goats to drive footfall and attendance at their yoga sessions. The lure of yoga as a placemaking activity has jumped the shark, but we’ve never seen baby goats amp that allure the way Cross Street Market has. For just $40 attendees receive a 60-minute yoga class, half-an-hour of cuddles with a bewitching biungulate, a tote bag plus a $5 market voucher. You may bleat at the idea, but we think it’s absolutely brill! Hell, $40 is a bargain just for the snuggle sesh!

There are two sides to every story, and ours is no different. We’re a strategic consultancy AND a tactical marketing agency, and the two feed and inform one another. We also do a lot of public speaking.

Just last week, we partnered with ULI and over a dozen agencies from the State of Delaware to present best practices for social marketing channels when promoting a district itself. This drilled all the way down to the individual merchants within their footprint. Are your restaurants, retailers and hospitality suffering? Give them a leg up with free and easy-to-use tools, marketing know-how and e-commerce solutions for small business. Learn how for one restaurant client during COVID, we:

Drove an injection of $20K in cash to kick start their recovery
Set up an e-commerce system the staff now manages with ease; enabling online ordering, curbside pick-up, and delivery capability at $1.50 per order
Increased share of search with over 135K searches in one month and over 4K actions (call, visit, reservations, directions)
Kick our competitors asses with over 1.19M photo views in one month (383% more than their comp set)!
Outsold 2018 & 2019 with this year’s restaurant week
Provided a whopping 1,988% ROI on their nominal ad investment

Photo credit: Kate Trifo, Unsplash

We’ve gone gaga for food halls, incubators and micro-business accelerators –especially when paired with a delicious dose of adaptive re-use. So much so, we’re developing a white paper on the topic right now. Not sure what we mean? Think along the lines of The Bourse in Philadelphia, Cross Street Market in Baltimore, the nascent Thoroughfare in West Palm Beach and the incredibly successful Selden Market in Downtown Norfolk. Full disclosure, we work with Selden with the whip smart team at DNC, and we’re looking for other examples of this type of ingenuity throughout the country. Got one near you that we should consider in our research? Drop a line and give us all the deets!

Photo credit: theboursephilly.com

Placemakingorum inventiosum! Presto! Magic! Simply add water (well, paint and some heavy lifting), and you’ve got an instant attraction for your downtown. We’re big fans of TX-based Better Block, and have featured their incredibly inventive projects in the past, but we gotta give props to the folks who just radically reimagined a space for kids in Historic Downtown McAllen TX with a one-two punch – right outta the box!

Photo credit: Better Block