Taste of Downtown
2020 was my first year running the annual Downtown Harrisonburg restaurant week, Taste of Downtown. This campaign's star had fallen a bit in past years, with 2019 in particular seeing a lack of enthusiasm from both restaurants and visitors. Traditionally, Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance (HDR) had charged participating restaurants a fee that would go towards paying for a local newspaper print ad promoting the week's events. I decided to make participation free and lean more heavily on earned media, trade media, and other opportunities that would be free or very low-cost to the restaurants to encourage higher participation and satisfaction.
I also left the options for being a part of the event completely open-ended, rather than mandating prixe-fix menus or other common restaurant week specials, and encouraged thinking outside of the box. I hoped that this would result in some creative events and offerings that would help me secure earned media coverage.
Taste of Downtown 2020
March 9-15th
26 participating restaurants
Project Management and Print Collateral
This campaign was an excellent exercise in project management, with me finding myself needing to secure participants, menus and details amongst 40+ busy restaurant and brewery owners in time to build the landing page and print physical media. I was working on a tight timeline coming off of the holidays and pulled together the foundations of the campaign in a record-setting two weeks, ensuring that I was able to get posters and rack cards printed and hand-distributed to all 26 participants a full month before the event in order to give restaurants adequate time to promote.
Radio Advertising
Earlier in 2020, I worked with the HDR Directors of Resources and Special Promotions to negotiate an annual partnership agreement with Harrisonburg Radio Group (HRG) to ensure that Taste of Downtown would receive radio coverage at no monetary cost to us. HRG was featured prominently as the presenting sponsor of the event in return for trade radio time. I wrote a script for a 30-second spot that enjoyed frequent air time across all HRG stations in the weeks leading up to and of the event. I also coordinated both on-air interview time and a radio giveaway campaign in which interested restaurants provided me with a gift card that would be given away on-air by HRG DJs the week of Taste of Downtown, which secured additional promotional coverage for both the event week and the individual restaurants.
Press Release and Earned Media
I wrote and distributed a press release to local media outlets and secured coverage by WHSV TV-3, the Daily News-Record, and The Citizen.
"Taste of Downtown comes to Harrisonburg" (WHSV)
"A Hunger for Harrisonburg" (DNR)
"Clear your palette because Taste of Downtown is back" (The Citizen)
Social Media
I produced a Facebook event which was boosted with an advertising budget of $325, reached 25.9k users, and saw over 4.7k event page views and 1.8k responses/RSVPs. Additionally, I made regular organic posts on both the HDR Facebook and Instagram profiles and the Taste of Downtown event to highlight the diverse selection of menus, specials, and offerings for the week as well as further amplify our earned media coverage.
Landing Page
All methods of promotion, physical and digital, directed audiences to the event landing page at tasteofdowntownhburg.com. This page listed all participating restaurants, details about their menu/promotion, and links to contact and visit them. I produced it using Wordpress. The landing page saw 4,808 views over the course of the campaign.