ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY received from the Victorian and Australian governments to renew the streetscape, Warrnambool City Council developed a promotion to generate excitement and interest in the city centre. It was a promotion which retailers could work to their advantage and for which the benefits were measurable as a result of a carefully structured competition entry system.
The result so far: with three months remaining the promotion has recorded $ 1.4 million in sales from more than 10,000 entries with more than half of those entering stating that the promotion influenced their decision to shop in the city centre.
Meanwhile, from the chrysalis of construction, a stunning main street is starting to emerge...
FINALIST
WAVERLEY CITY COUNCIL“ Hello Bondi”
Waverley Council’ s Economic Development team is tasked with supporting existing businesses, while attracting new business and investment. Bondi has a well-established visitor economy and is one of the key visitor attractions in Sydney and Australia.
Visitor and destination management represents a key direction for Waverley Council. It was found that there is a lack of centralised information for visitors to Bondi. To resolve the gap between access to information and visitors, a suite of projects named“ Hello Bondi” establish Waverley Council’ s first tourism website, an associated tourism app and public Wi-Fi. The website is the landing page for the Wi-Fi and provides more layered information than the app which focuses on key elements from the website.
The key objectives of the first official guide to Bondi includes supporting the visitor economy by increasing local business turnover, providing accurate visitor information to visitors to Bondi, and promoting Hello Bondi to the local business community as an initiative from Waverley Council providing business support.
The website was developed in consultation with a range of internal and external stakeholders including local businesses. The Hello Bondi website offers a virtual visitor information centre and serves as a domestic and international promotional tool.
The key lesson from this project was to define a target market clearly. Marketing and promotion initiatives require a clearly defined target market to ensure success of the project.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT – SINGLE EVENT OR ACTIVITY
WINNER
SUNSHINE COAST COUNCIL“ The Absolutely Authentic Mensa Test!”
Sunshine Coast Council’ s economic development efforts include nurturing business growth and attracting investment within seven High Value Industries( HVIs).
Goals like doubling GDP and high-value employment opportunities from 2013 to 2033 mean achieving more economically in 20 years than the previous 50 years!
In 2016, Council’ s Investment Attraction team set about creating an out-of-the-box marketing and investment lead generation campaign and the“ Your HQ with IQ” campaign was born( This application details one of the first“ Your HQ with IQ” campaign activities:“ The Absolutely Authentic Mensa Test!” direct marketing campaign.
For cut-through, a creative, hard-to-miss direct mail package was designed.
• Contents included IQ-inspired personalised brochure and“ The Absolutely Authentic Mensa Test!” card game.
• To achieve a more personal approach and bucking the trend of relying solely on email, the package was delivered by good, old-fashioned snail mail.
This initiative kicked goals for several reasons:
• Took a non-traditional approach to marketing a region, resulting in extremely positive feedback:‘ I didn’ t expect to see something like this from a council’.
• Taking a fun and creative approach by including the Mensa IQ game, the mail piece embodied the message that the Sunshine Coast is a creative, smart business location.
• Resulted in personal contact with valuable list of C-suite executives and development of a highquality lead database.
By not being afraid to directly market high-value leads with a fun and possibly cheeky mail piece, the team communicated its creative, smart positioning in a truly memorable way.
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