10 minute read
Promoting
from Annual Review 2019
Retail sales since December have shown positive growth, with an average increase of 1.3%.
Promoting Total spend – £669,206
A thriving city centre is a place people want to visit and spend time in. We have invested 66% of the total project budget in promoting the BID area, creating activity and engagement to support the BID community. Retail sales across the UK have seen a decline in the past twelve months. While Edinburgh followed this national trend in the early part of our reporting year, retail sales since December have shown positive growth in six out of seven months, with an average increase of 1.3%. Essential Edinburgh Events The two events produced by Essential Edinburgh created a total economic value of almost £5.2 million; for every £1 spent on events during this reporting year we generated over £435 of spend in the city centre.
Edinburgh Farmers’ Market This Saturday staple continues to be a significant footfall draw for both locals and tourists. The Market celebrated its 19th birthday in August 2019 and it remains the only true, certified farmers’ market in the city. Our stallholders are all local producers who grow, rear, bake, pickle or brew their own products, ensuring traceability and an unrivalled customer experience.
The market pulls in around 350,000 shoppers each year. In addition to being a footfall generator for the city centre, it’s also a completely self-sustaining part of Essential Edinburgh. It adds to your levy investment from its profits and allows us to do even more for our businesses.
“I just wanted to reach out to say amazing job on the Open Air Cinema, it was a great success for Links of London – we had 25% more traffic than last week and 35% more than LY. It most importantly led to an increase in sales, in particular on the collections that were advertised on screen. Thank you for allowing us to be a part of it.”
Ian Carmichael, Links of London – Multrees Walk.
Film Fest in the City Back for its eighth year, our hugely successful outdoor cinema in St Andrew Square Garden continues to be a highlight; delivering three days of free films in partnership with Unique Events and Edinburgh International Film Festival. For the second year running over 100 BID businesses participated with free adverts on the giant outdoor screen.
Over 15,000 attendees enjoyed a superb array of films over the three days – up from 10,500 in 2018; 57% came into Edinburgh especially for Film Fest in the City and 64% of attendees went on to shop, eat or drink in the BID, spending on average almost £63 bringing an economic value for the city centre of over £623,000 – for every £1 spent on Film Fest in the City we generated over £29 of spend in the city centre.
15,000 ATTENDED WITH OVER 100 BUSINESS PARTICIPATING WITH ADVERTS 64% WHO CAME TO THE FILM FEST ALSO VISITED SHOPS / RESTAURANTS / BARS IN EDINBURGH (OR WERE PLANNING TO DO SO).
57% HAD TRAVELLED TO THE CITY ESPECIALLY FOR THE FILM FEST – UP 10% ON 2018 86% AUDIENCE FROM EDINBURGH & LOTHIANS (57% FROM EDINBURGH) 100% RATED THEIR ENJOYMENT OF THE EVENT AS GOOD OR VERY GOOD (74% VERY GOOD RATING) 90% SAID THEY WOULD VISIT THE EVENT AGAIN IN 2020 AVERAGE SPEND WAS £62.84
Social Media Engagement
ALMOST 250K REACH WITH FACEBOOK AND JUST UNDER 16K ENGAGEMENTS 93 TWEETS WITH 57 CONTRIBUTORS OVER 7 DAYS OVER 600K IMPRESSIONS OVER 216K REACH
George Street Festival We worked with Assembly Festival and the Edinburgh International Book Festival to animate George Street. A mixture of festival entertainment and extended on-street space for our restaurant and bar businesses proved a great success. Hospitality sales increased by 1.8% on 2017 even with unseasonably poor weather during August 2018.
REACH 90% EH RESIDENTS 2.8M DIGITAL IMPRESSIONS
INCREASE IN FOLLOWERS 4K+ NEW FOLLOWERS 41% UPLIFT
PRESS COVERAGE 159 PRESS/RADIO/ SOCIAL 11.2M OTS
ENGAGEMENT 29K+ SOCIAL ENGAGEMENTS 181% UPLIFT 2K+ EXPERIENTIAL ENGAGEMENTS
Promoting - Marketing Campaign
The new BID centred marketing campaign launched on 8th October 2018 using bus, tram, train, kiosk, radio, social media and on street activity to encourage regular city centre visits from locals and commuters. A second phase of advertising and activity ran from the end of May through June. The two campaign phases reached over 90% of EH residents, drove 2.8 million digital impressions, over 29,000 social engagements and created an uplift in followers of over 40%. The on-street activation of the campaign – The Great Time Game, Treasure Hunt, Grab a Great Time and the Flash Sale – saw 100 businesses provide prizes and 110 businesses name-checked.
We know the creative has resonated with commuters and residents; 99% of the consumer panel liked the campaign, 95% felt the campaign was “for people like me” and 56% were more likely to visit to the city centre as a result. In this coming year you will see a fully wrapped Lothian bus, on street activation including a reverse grotto this Christmas and a digital creative campaign that will span the full year. To make sure your business makes the most of these opportunities please keep your eyes peeled for all our digital communications.
@EDINCITYCENTRE TWITTER INCREASED ON LAST YEAR BY 14.3% TO 3,910 WITH THE TWEETS EARNING 408K IMPRESSIONS OVER THE YEAR. THIS IS AN AVERAGE OF 34K IMPRESSIONS A MONTH. @EDFARMERSMARKET TWITTER INCREASED ON LAST YEAR BY 1.8% TO 11,326 WITH THE TWEETS EARNING 237K IMPRESSIONS OVER THE YEAR. THIS IS AN AVERAGE OF 19.8K IMPRESSIONS A MONTH.
ALL THREE OF OUR TWITTER ACCOUNTS EARNED A COMBINED TOTAL OF 1,037,700 IMPRESSIONS
EDINBURGH FARMERS’ MARKET CHANNELS HAVE 28,577, AN ORGANIC INCREASE OF 3.3% ON LAST YEAR.
53.7K FOLLOWERS ACROSS ALL ESSENTIAL EDINBURGH SOCIAL CHANNELS (EXCLUDING GIFT CARD) 10.1% INCREASE.
TOTAL REACH ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGES WAS 1.4M
我们是 Essential Edinburgh 为您提供爱丁堡市中心的商业管理服务
Edinburgh Gift Card The Edinburgh Gift Card launched alongside the City Centre Marketing Campaign in October 2018. It is a pre-paid Mastercard that is currently accepted in over 90 BID area businesses. It is helping to lock in spend for Edinburgh city centre businesses; encouraging people to explore our great city and share their messages with friends, family and colleagues.
Within this reporting year 217 businesses were engaged with, creating individual competitions or spotlight campaigns on the Edinburgh Gift Card social media channels.
As a levy payer it’s free to accept the gift card, there’s no additional hardware or software required, no joining fee and you will get free promotion as part of the scheme through spotlight campaigns, promotional messages and competitions. So make sure you are signed up to accept the Edinburgh Gift Card and benefit from the locked-in spend in the city centre. China Ready – Weibo & WeChat Edinburgh’s fastest-growing and highestspending visitor group are the Chinese and their visits are set to more than double by 2020. With over 80,000 combined followers and over 141 million impressions to May 2019 the official Edinburgh Weibo and WeChat channels are increasingly valuable assets for local businesses. Through collaboration with the China Ready group and ETAG we have been able to offer a regular platform for our levy payers to engage with this growing audience.
For Chinese New Year (CNY) 2019 we offered a platform for our businesses to be in the official Edinburgh Chinese New Year celebratory programme. The campaign was the largest Edinburgh has produced with 20 events and 13 promotions. The campaign had 46 media placements, including front pages, TV and China Daily with an estimated viewership of 967,000 people.
30,000 CNY BROCHURES 63 TELEPHONE BOX SITES AND 18 6-SHEET POSTER SITES WITH A CAMPAIGN REACH OF 731K PEOPLE.
46 PIECES OF MEDIA COVERAGE WITH AN ESTIMATED VIEWERSHIP OF 967,000 PEOPLE 5,000 CNY RED ENVELOPES REACH OF 667,846 PEOPLE ACROSS PRINT, SOCIAL MEDIA, NEWSLETTERS AND DIGITAL DISPLAY VIA THE LIST PARTNERSHIP
Edinburgh WOWS! Working closely with the Edinburgh Cultural Venues Group we have financially supported and promoted the digital marketing campaign “Edinburgh Wows”.
This campaign highlights Edinburgh’s yearround cultural offering and aims to boost the non-festival months, communicating the emotional experiences derived from visiting our vast offering of world class cultural venues.
Communicating with you We work hard as a team to keep you all updated, informed and engaged. To share important and interesting information we use all available platforms, including our BID Liaison Officer, to keep the information flowing.
Make sure you are following us on social media and that you are on our mailing list .
AT THE END OF EDINBURGH WOWS PHASE 1 OF PAID ADVERTISING - MAY 2019 - THERE HAD BEEN OVER 1.1 MILLION VIDEO VIEWS
WITH 2.7 MILLION REACH/ IMPRESSIONS ACROSS FACEBOOK AND YOUTUBE. THE SECOND PHASE OF DIGITAL ADVERTISING WILL BE LIVE FROM OCTOBER 2019 TO FEBRUARY 2020.
101 Objects In partnership with agencies across the city we continued to support 101 Objects, promoting important historical objects in our BID area.
Light Night on George Street Solely funded by Essential Edinburgh, the annual Light Night extravaganza on George Street saw around 16,000 revellers enjoy an afternoon of dance, music and activity to celebrate the official start of Edinburgh’s Christmas festivities.
Winter Festival in the BID with Silent Light Alongside the ice rink in St Andrew Square Garden a new attraction for the west end of George Street was created in partnership with Underbelly. We invested significantly in Silent Light, which was enjoyed by over 50,000 people and encouraged a significant number of visitors to the west end of the BID.
Burns & Beyond This innovative partnership event produced by Unique Events, saw a packed programme including traditional Burns Night celebrations and ceilidhs mixed with music, spoken word, comedy, busking, trails and theatre. This new week-long event incorporated the previously successful Red, Red Rose Street.
The audience was predominately from Edinburgh (68%) and Lothians (16%) with 91% of attendees rating their overall experience of Burns & Beyond as very good or good and 100% of attendees to Red, Red Rose Street activities rated it an excellent or very good experience with 73% purchasing drinks or food in Rose Street businesses while attending events.
The spotlight will once again be on the BID with the 2020 event set to be even bigger. With Burns night and Chinese New Year falling on the same day, there is a double opportunity for your business to benefit.
To find out how your business can get involved with Burns & Beyond 2020 please get in touch with our marketing team.
84% AUDIENCE FROM EDINBURGH & LOTHIANS AREA 100% OF ATTENDEES RATED RED, RED ROSE STREET ACTIVITY AN EXCELLENT OR VERY GOOD EXPERIENCE 73% PURCHASED FOOD/DRINK IN ROSE STREET WHILST ATTENDING EVENTS
91% OF BURNS & BEYOND ATTENDEES RATED IT VERY GOOD OR GOOD 85% OF
ATTENDEES WOULD NOT HAVE CELEBRATED BURNS NIGHT AT ALL OR WOULD HAVE CELEBRATED AT HOME IF THEY’D NOT ATTENDED 50% SAID BURNS & BEYOND WAS THEIR ONLY OR MAIN REASON FOR VISITING THE CITY CENTRE
