– Your Bright Brothers Team
David Romako / Josh Yeager /  Brandi Walsh

Painted crosswalks can enhance the public realm, and offer opportunities to connect the local creative set with infrastructure needs — but can they also help save lives?  We looked at how seven cities used their $25K grants from Bloomberg Philanthropies in our last edition of the Bulletin, and we’re digging deeper this week. A grandmother in Tempe, AZ thinks ADOT should paint 3D crosswalks to deter wrong-way collisions at freeway ramps, and there’s scads of info, evidence and studies for you to lean on, should you decide to do one locally. At the bottom of this page, Bloomberg offers resources for you including an Asphalt Art Guide with global best practices and case studies, as well as an Asphalt Art Safety Study that points to an empirical “50% drop in crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists”.  So, hell yeah grandma!  We’re with ya on this one!

Photo credit: Brittainy Newman, Jade Warrick , Troy, NY

We ❤ nerding out, and that bodes well for us since we work at the intersection of people and technology. So it’s no surprise that we do a LOT of research on current and future issues that impact the districts we work with. Case in point, we keep talking about the metaverse and what it means for your community. While you may be overwhelmed with where to begin, one thing is assured. The metaverse will change how people interact with your district. So to help you get your arms around bringing your brand into the ‘verse, we wanted to highlight two great articles for you. This piece from Search Engine Journal explains “Effective Brand Building In The Metaverse”, but if that’s too conceptual, we also loved this recent round-up of “7 Spectacular sci-fi movies that will prepare you for the rise of the metaverse” from Digital Trends — which may provide some more entertaining ways to appreciate the topic. Let us know which you like best!

Photo credit: Stephan Sorkin, Unsplash

…that getting people to unsubscribe from your email distro can actually be a good thing? It’s kind of like pruning the deadheads off of flowering plants to give you more robust results in the long run. People subscribe to email lists for various reasons, but over time seeing your e-blasts pop into their inbox may no longer elicit excited opens and click-thrus. So what’s a marketer to do? Cut the dead weight! Author Ann Gynn put together this succinct primer outlining an “Unsubscribe Strategy” for the Content Marketing Institute that you’ll wanna consider before sending out your next newsletter. List hygiene is an important part of what can, and probably should be, your top performance marketing channel, so don’t sleep on this one. Share it with your MarCom manager today!

Photo credit: Brett Jordan, Unsplash 

The holidays can be stressful, and this year thanks to runaway inflation, even more expensive to get your Turkey Day on. So we decided a FREEBIE was in order to help make your Thanksgiving social media a little easier. Send your social media manager this awesome holiday-themed template and go turkey in your Stories, Reels and more! It’s a deliciously simple way to show your gratitude to the community. Add your logo to the top, and encourage your followers to tag local businesses. Bon Appétit, peeps!

There’s so much discussion in our industry about how well our districts are rebounding from the pandemic — and a lot of it is anecdotal. If you wanna get the real deal, and a true sense of how well you’re faring compared to other cities, check out this Metro Recovery Index from the Brookings Institution. The index contains dashboards with KPIs on the local labor market, economic activity and real estate for the top 192 U.S. Metro areas with populations of 250K+, and there is additional context and insight in this follow-up piece published after the dashboard data. So now you can speak with your board, city officials and your stakeholders with certainty and data-driven proof of your hard work as place management practitioners. 

Photo credit: Brookings.edu