Dear Merchants/GBA Members,
First and foremost I want to personally thank for for your support of the GBA and the advertising campaign that we initiated last year. We feel the ad campaign was and is a huge success, even in its limited first edition form. We have had very positive responses from numerous restaurants and businesses who have had customers comment that they were there due to seeing one or more parts of the ad campaign. Only 2 of 6 television spots have been released and the brochure is set to be distributed this month. What has been done has been positive and successful and there is much more to come!
In the coming weeks I will be going before City Council to ask for $200,000 to continue and expand the advertising campaign. More television spots, more social networking, more printed materials and much more exposure for the City of Georgetown. Phase II is a very exciting and aggressive campaign that will reach more people and promote Georgetown in a way that has never been done before. But we need your help:
The ad campaign in its present form has not been running long enough for us to have a great deal of feedback and hard data to use in our presentation to Council. Due to the timing of the budget meetings, we have no choice but to go forward with our presentation in early April.To make up for this lack of hard data, we need your help. Written testimonials from as many merchants as possible supporting the ad campaign will go along way in convincing City Council to allocate the money for the GBA to continue this marketing effort. For your information, we are not suggesting the merchants contribute monetarily to Phase II. You dug deep and came up with in excess of $17,000 for the first part of the campaign. We have proven it was a good idea and that it was successful. Now it is time for the City to fund it without the merchants having to contribute personally. If any of you have had customers mention to you that they were in your store or restaurant due to seeing one of the ads, we need to know about it in the form of a written testimonial. If not, but you still support the ad campaign, we need to have that as well. The more written support we can present to Council along with our proposal the better. I am asking each of you to take the time to write a short letter that we can put on the official record when we go before Council. Please understand this marketing effort is designed to bring more people into your respective businesses, your support is crucial if we are to be successful.
One more favor. We will let you know in advance the date of the Council meeting. Personal and visual support will also go a long way in our favor. We would like as many of you as possible to attend the meeting and show your support.
Thank you in advance for your response to this request. Hopefully we will have a stack of testimonials to present to Council in a few weeks!
Regards,
Al Joseph
President – Georgetown Business Association
