Can you feel that whispery, misty chill in the air? The leaves are beginning to turn, there’s a ghostly fog befalling downtown, and Mr. T wants you to wear your seatbelt! What the heck are these guys on about?! Read on to learn about the spoopiest places in North America (and please share your local ghost stories with us!!!), how Happy Hour pricing may be the key to turning on your downtown, we get droney widdit with a spectacular studio lighting up the night skies, we show you exactly why you need to pinch ADNY’s content strategy to support your ratepayers, and we sit down with Isabel Loos to get the juice on one amazing platform that can amp your public realm without an app. Seriously, wouldja knock it off with the damn app downloads? No one is making fetch happen on an app, Regina! Nobody!!
Wishing you the best of High Holidays,
– Your Bright Brothers Team
David Romako / Josh Yeager / Brandi Walsh
Is cheap booze the key to revitalizing your downtown? There’s a sea change afoot with regard to discounted liquor and draconian laws prohibiting happy hour, based on social blowback from about forty years ago. If you were around then, social norms were vastly different around alcohol consumption, drinking, and driving, (even seatbelt usage was only by 14% of the U.S. population in 1983!). We’re in a much different place societally than we were in the era of Reaganomics, E.T., and Mr. T! In today’s post-pandemic world, we’re seeing more emphasis on freedoms, flexibility, self-regulation, and most importantly education. With the advent of near-ubiquitous rideshare, the answer now exists for those who may have tippled a few too many at the holiday party or “Thirsty Thursday” (aka the new Friday) and end-of-week steam blow-offs This piece from Route Fifty explores how the ramifications of legal happy hours are evolving, even in conservative commonwealths and states with restrictive drinking laws. Case in point, after years of being “hammered” (and not in the “omfg my head won’t stop spinning, grab the bucket” sorta way) over its supposed “Doom Loop” narrative — even party-friendly San Francisco is amping their efforts to promote legalized, open-carry “entertainment zones” as part of their comeback strategy. So what’s the deal in your town, and how many of your events, festivals and placemaking efforts include a bit of the “water of life”?
Drones. Hell yeah, we said it. We 🖤 drones! In the past, we’ve shown you how drones can be a safer and more compassionate alternative to fireworks, plus drones are infinitely better than releasing all that smoke, air, and noise pollution into your district. The flexibility of drone shows, while pricey, can give your community a competitive edge over neighboring municipalities. But how about we look at drones from another perspective? Placemaking. We discovered this li’l nug on Insta, which led us down a rabbit hole of speculative wonder, excitement, and a sense of extreme calm while exploring the Dutch artist duo of Studio Drift, which specializes in experiential sculptures, installations, and performances. From indoor, immersive experiences like “Drifters at the Shed NYC” to outdoor extravaganzas like “Electric Sky at Luma” in Arles, France, and “Franchise Freedom” in New York’s Central Park (odd name that we don’t quite understand, since the exposition was based on migratory birds’ flight patterns — then again, these are artists we’re talking about here!) — these awe-inspiring spectacles have the power to move the needle in terms of temporary placemaking. If the price points of drone shows, which often run in the six-figure + range, are cost-prohibitive for you, we’d also like to reiterate that IDA member Novaby, and A3 Visual (the powerhouse behind Let’s Glow SF) develop custom, immersive experiences utilizing technology (not drones) that could even snag you a Pinnacle Award, as well as the respect and admiration of your region. And none of these options scare pets or trigger vets, so you know we heart them!
… that there’s one single platform that can act as your downtown ambassador, personal concierge, handle wayfinding, manage public intercept surveys, maps, directories, ratepayer support, event and placemaking promotion, promote entertainment walks (like beer and wine trails, history tours…etc.), interactive parking meters, countering the impacts of “construction disruption”, a tool for flood resiliency and so much more? It’s true! And the platform is called Hello Lamp Post, or HLP for short. If you attended the data session in Seattle where our co-founder Josh talked about technology and storytelling, you have heard about this fascinating platform that is so dynamic, so well planned out, and so impactful for UPMOs in so many ways. Hello Lamp Post is ingenious in its simplicity while utilizing cutting-edge AI to drive its functionality. It’s versatile in its use, and districts that have used it have gained superior results and saved time, money, and resources. Sound too good to be true? Here’s the deal. HLP turns any piece of public realm infrastructure into an interactive digital assistant, driving to your predetermined goals. Cities around the globe have deployed this powerful technology, and now your town can too.
To learn more, we sat down with Isabel Loos, Head of Community Engagement for North America, to better understand the hows and whys of HLP, and how it can help your place management organization. Isabel tells us that Hello Lamp Post is a two-way communication and engagement platform, and they work with DMOs and downtowns to provide digital assistants for public places. As residents and visitors explore your area, they scan a QR code on strategically placed interactive signage, instantly opening a chat window on their phone. No apps to download. No nonsense, BS, or barriers-to-entry. From there, their system initiates an engaging, AI-powered conversation. Hello Lamp Post acts as a 24/7 extension of your team providing location-specific information and answering questions — in real time. She furthered that, HLP tracks live engagement patterns and analyzes how people interact with the platform, gathering valuable insights that empower you to make informed, data-driven decisions. Given the challenges of 24/7 staff availability, Hello Lamp Post’s two-way communication tool automates engagement, ensuring you can connect with and support anyone, anywhere, at any time.
This is really impressive stuff to us! So we needed to know what the costs and ROI look like, and Isabel brought the receipts! She let us know that, “We work on an annual license model; everything from the setup of the system and interactive conversations, marketing support, signage design, data and analytics, and ongoing management are included in the cost, which ranges from $10-15K per year for most downtowns. We can be up and running in 4-6 weeks!” — love to see it! But even more so, Loos noted that “Initially it might look like an additional cost, but on average our partners avoid 72% or $40,082 in engagement costs, and many hours of staff time every year. Our platform not only sets your district apart as an innovative leader and provides a great downtown experience, but helps you make smarter decisions and use your resources more efficiently. We work with a lot of small teams with limited resources, and using HLP allows them to expand their reach dramatically, with relatively little effort,”.
One of the best things about the place management industry is our culture of sharing, which is fostered, top-down by IDA itself. That said, your peers and partners have already vetted Hello Lamp Post for you, so you can rest assured this isn’t just some “panacea snake oil” vendor. Isabel shared that HLP has already worked with Downtown Iowa City, Downtown Long Beach, Colfax Ave BID, SW BID Washington DC, Travel Medford, Downtown Great Falls, Central Street Evanston, Downtown Denton and Old Town Scottsdale — just in the States alone! If you’d like to learn more, check out their BID page, or join their FREE webinar on “Creating Interactive Places” on October 30th. If you attend, let ‘em know that you read about Hello Lamp Post in the Bright Brothers Bulletin!
They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. Therefore, we’re telling you to RIP THIS OFF! Those crafty kings of content over at ADNY have done it again with this handy, dandy flow chart that just about any district could replicate and make their own. The brilliant thing about this flow chart is that it’s a piece of “gateway content”. And here’s why it’s brilliant. It showcases ratepayers in their district, while ingeniously storytelling and supporting district assets. It adeptly balances that age-old UPMO conundrum of “we have to give equal credit to all ratepayers” (no, you don’t), and it doesn’t — with another means of including everyone. But what it does do is highlight some top-notch district dining, while acting as the … appetizer, so to speak. The flowchart is a visually engaging, eye-catching, interactive piece that’s perfect for web and social — that ultimately intrigues and drives the user to want (to consume) more. And therein lies the “gateway” aspect. This blog serves as a call to action to snag yourself a brand new, red hot & spicy serving of the district’s “2024 Shop Dine Guide”. See how they did that? The tasty take you might see on social, or in a newsletter gets you sorted for lunch, while also serving to draw you deeper into ADNY’s full dining scene. It’s a clever way to tie storytelling to consumption while meeting the district’s aim of supporting their ratepayers. We highly advise you get with your content director and graphic designer tout de suite to develop some mouthwatering ooh la la like this! Pass it on!
It’s spoopy szn, our FAVORITE time of year! So ofc we were all ears (and claws, and scales, and wings), when we landed on this petit piece from Forbes outlining some of the scariest places in North America. And while just about every town and locale have their treasured tall tales, ghost stories and spooky rumors passed down from gen to gen, the article does indeed highlight a handful of supposedly paranormal places, and not all from the States, we might add. And this got our ghost brains thinking — what if we did a round-up from subscribers for our next eblast that included submissions from our readers about the local haunts, hangs and fangs from your neck of the woods? Do you have a scary tale to share? Could you send us a high-res photo for good measure? If you send us the goods before EOD Friday 10/18/24, we’ll include you in our next bulletin — manifesting in your inbox just in time for Halloween! Muahahahaha! 🎃👻🎃
“Initially it might look like an additional cost, but on average our partners avoid 72% or $40,082 in engagement costs, and many hours of staff time every year,” — Isabel Loos, Head of Community Engagement for North America, Hello Lamp Post
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