The NYCEDC – New York City Economic Development Corp seeks a marketing agency and PR firm. NYCEDC manages a system of major public retail markets in New York City (“”). These historic public retail markets serve as a critical component of the food retail infrastructure for New York City’s communities.
The public retail markets strive to achieve the City’s double bottom line goals by:
Providing small business assistance to vendors, allowing them to thrive in place (anti- gentrification);
- Promoting the market’s unique history and the role of the community to create city-wide destination;
- Providing access to affordable, healthy and diverse food options;
- Connecting the markets and vendors to the surrounding communities through events, programming and partnerships with local community stakeholders.
- Strategic Planning and Development of Marketing Content
- Generate strategic ideas for the positioning of the public retail market system in general, and each directly managed market in specific, using the current mission as a guide.
- Develop a plan for the scope and scale of communication content, including PR, marketing, social media and advertising. Such a plan should explicitly consider monthly newsletters (printed, direct mailed, and electronic), community relations management, expansion, and events/programming.
- Consultant will propose such strategic ideas to NYCEDC on a regular basis as implementation proceeds on the other elements of the scope.
- Positioning and Demographic Targeting
- Using the mission above and NYCEDC values as a guide, develop the unique value proposition and market positioning of the markets as a whole. A competitive set should be developed in the market and comparisons drawn.
- Comparable product types in other cities should be considered for inspiration.
- Core demographics to target should be identified, and described in terms of traditional demographics and psychographics.
- A clear set of metrics for success should be developed in light of both reach (impressions within each demographic), participation (for digital) and retail foot traffic generation. This should include:
- Neighborhood demographics such as youth and elders
- Low-income families for other neighborhoods adjacent
- Cultural affinity groups for the unique culture represented by the market
- Tourists visiting
- Trade, press and social should be heavily relied upon for expanding reach of the budget.
- Branding
- Develop an overall strategy and brand architecture that appropriately reflects the new mission and roll-out of the directly managed markets while presenting an opportunity for partnership and alignment of all of New York City’s public retail market assets.
- Such work shall comprise the development of a consistent brandmark, market logo design, tagline, messaging, as well as the creation of brand guidelines and template advertisement/flyers for partner events.
- The brand positioning and branding should be aligned with NYCEDC’s strategic plan.
- Develop an overall strategy and brand architecture that appropriately reflects the new mission and roll-out of the directly managed markets while presenting an opportunity for partnership and alignment of all of New York City’s public retail market assets.
- Marketing and other Activities
- Build awareness of New York City’s public market system as a whole.
- Build positive market impressions about New York City’s public retail markets individually amongst customers, leveraging the system to have local impact.
- In doing so, Consultant shall align advertising to each market’s unique cultural presence and historical timeline.
- Position the market to attract a diverse mix of market customers through targeted efforts in each demographic:
- Amongst at-risk groups such as low-income families to promote markets as places of great value by enticing low income families and individuals to redeem SNAP benefits at the market.
- Within neighborhoods, build awareness of each individual market through aggressive marketing of events, shopping days, and programming. Additionally, brainstorm events and programming that can promote community and goodwill.
- Promote New York City’s public retail markets to tourists and visitors as places of a unique shopping experience.
- With cultural affinity groups, help understand what within the merchandising mix and programming will attract more support from those groups to each market.
- Provide promotional and marketing support to individual market vendors by name in targeted advertisings and special events.
- Develop a retail market system newsletter (digital and print), focused around a monthly events calendar, promotions and stories from each particular market. Create a direct mail and online subscription strategy.
- Assist in building relationships with stakeholders in target market segments and the broader private market.
- Digital
- Create a friendly, usable, mobile-ready website to showcase New York City’s public retail markets, under a single domain name, that highlights the history and cultural significance of the markets, vendors, events and programming.
- Create a website that allows users to sign-up for newsletter; download market vendor applications and other pertinent market-ready enquiries and forms.
- Create and maintain a strong social media presence to keep customers up to date on events, new and old vendors, and market news.
- Create an electronic version of the monthly market newsletter to showcase events and market news at all markets.
- Identify and partner with bloggers who can generate positive content about New York City’s public retail markets.
- Develop strategies for increasing social presence and unearned media.
- Serve as curator of the overall digital community for the markets.
- Events & Programming
- Assist in the evaluation of the current event calendar, and identify strengths and weaknesses relative to the anticipated positioning of each individual market and the market system as a whole. Suggest additions as appropriate.
- Assist in the evaluation and/or attraction of special events and festivals at each location to highlight and promote both the individual market and New York City’s public retail market system.
- Assist in the attraction of site-specific cultural presentations (book signings, unplugged music shows, cooking classes, etc.) that underscore the cultural role of the markets and surrounding neighborhoods.
- Assist in a “big think” on the creation of a special yearly grand public markets festival to raise the media profile of New York City’s public retail markets.
- Public Relations
- Help attract media interest in New York City’s public retail markets, including radio, TV and print media.
- Help develop local “champions” in media for the markets.
- Assist in building relationships with affiliates and taste makers in other cities to help reinforce the place in for the markets.
- Assist in connecting with stakeholders that will respond as champions to our new mission, specifically around thrive-in-place and cultural relevancy.
- Assist in building relationships with stakeholders in public institutions.
- Such institutions may include, but are not limited to, local resident and community development organizations, and schools.
- Help attract media interest in New York City’s public retail markets, including radio, TV and print media.
- Research
- Assist with quantifying marketing and promotions metrics.
- Such metrics may include, but are not limited to, number of website visits, social media followers, etc.
- Assist with communicating information about quantified double-bottom-line impacts of New York City’s public retail markets through the use of marketing metrics.
- Such quantification may include, but is not limited to, evidencing discounted pricing relative to market-rate pricing of food goods, and the amount of sales attributable to low-income residents of the neighboring communities and low- income consumers generally.
- Assist with event data capture, in terms of taking pictures and collecting active attendee information.
- Assist with quantifying marketing and promotions metrics.
