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A Year In Review

Our commercial district placebrand celebrates all the people and businesses that make Strathcona different and exceptional. Our marketing and promotional efforts over the last year have focused on unique campaigns across digital channels to continue building district brand awareness, promote district businesses and engage the local community, and create a culture of pride in the district among businesses and visitors alike. Through storytelling and place activations, we showcase what our members do to make Strathcona a vibrant and resilient community. Here’s how we’ve been bringing Strathcona to the hearts and minds of people across the Lower Mainland, communicating our unique strengths as a place to work, live, play, and invest.

Here’s the high-level breakdown of impacts we’ve achieved.

400 banners maintained

20K website visitors

96 unique businesses featured across digital channels

8 promotional campaigns

Dine Strathcona media coverage earned 13.4 million impressions

Launched inaugural Strathcona Brewery Week

54 original videos achieved 137K views

$24,825 invested in community sponsorships

Website and Directory

Our website showcases the distinct character of our commercial district and draws people in to discover something different in Strathcona. We continue to update our comprehensive member directory, featuring all the businesses in Strathcona across our varied sectors. The directory supports the digital presence and searchability of our member businesses online. In the last year our website had over 20,000 visits by over 9200 unique users. Our new website users are up 40% from the same period a year prior.

District and Member Features

We’re capturing and sharing more about our members through original photography, video footage, and digital storytelling content than ever before. In the last year we’ve featured 96 unique Strathcona BIA business members across our channels, which is up 33% from the previous year. In that time we’ve seen a 46% increase in followers on our Instagram channel.

We’ve put a strong focus on creating engaging video content, where we’ve had the most successful organic reach to new audiences. In the last year we created and published 54 original videos and Reels, and four collaborative Reels, across our social media channels. Our original video content achieved 137,121 cumulative views across our social platforms with an average engagement rate of 5.3% and the collaborative Reels with partner influencers reached 191,049 views. We also share and promote our members and the happenings in our business district on Twitter, where our tweets made over 67,400 impressions over the last year. A highlight of our member features is our Meet the Maker series, featuring artisans and makers across multiple sectors operating in Strathcona.    

Campaign Highlights

Our November 2021 Dine Strathcona campaign brought together 19 businesses in Strathcona’s hospitality sector to showcase the neighbourhood’s vibrant culinary scene while raising awareness and funds for H.A.V.E. Culinary Training Society. HAVE provides accessible food service training and employment opportunities to members of the community who face barriers to employment. The campaign launched with a media event for food and lifestyle media personnel and influencers, and resulted in 27 pieces of traditional media coverage, earning 13.4 million impressions or a publicity value of $124K. The social media posts about the campaign reached an estimated 647K people. In total over 1580 feature dishes were sold during the two week time-frame by participating businesses, which amounted to approximately $26,500 in cumulative sales. We were able to reach our goal of providing a $5000 community sponsorship on behalf of the Strathcona hospitality sector to HAVE Culinary Training Society, providing funding to enroll new students in HAVE’s training program and help secure job placements for new graduates in Vancouver restaurants.      

During the holidays we focused on lifting up our retail sector members through publishing unique Strathcona-based gift guides, and running a 12 Days of Giving campaign of amazing prize giveaways on our Instagram channel. We also partnered with BIA’s across Vancouver on the Gift Big, Shop Small, Stock Joy Charity Auction, where curated stockings of incredible gifts from each district were auctioned off in support of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank.  

In January 2022, we featured Strathcona establishments with special offerings for the Lunar New Year. We partnered with three foodie influencers to produce creative Instagram Reels which reached over 190K unique accounts, with an engagement rate of 6.7%. This approach resulted in highly engaging content from diverse voices and celebrated the rich Asian heritage and culture in our community. 

In February we took part in the BIA-wide Love Your City campaign, which encouraged Vancouverites to get out to participating neighbourhoods, explore, and find LOVE in our city. MakerLabs in Strathcona helped produce custom sweethearts with messages of love and compliments that were hung up in every sub-district of Strathcona. We ran a popular local business district gift card scavenger hunt, using the hearts as hiding places and engaging audiences on social media with clues on where to find them.

For International Women’s Day we launched a Strathcona Women-Owned Business Directory and also interviewed several women entrepreneurs flourishing in Strathcona. The personal stories of these womens’ passion, hard work, and motivation behind their businesses were featured throughout the week in March on our social media channels. 

During Earth Week in April we shined a spotlight on two businesses in Strathcona doing great things in the way of slow fashion and environmentally responsible fabrics. Blackbird Fabrics offers a wide range of fabrics and supplies for sewists across the globe, with an emphasis on fabrics that are environmentally and socially responsible. Our Social Fabric is a non-profit fabric store tackling textile waste by selling donated deadstock fabric online and in-person. Our Instagram giveaway to these two businesses was one of our most popular of the year, earning over 2500 impressions and over 840 post interactions!

Throughout May we put an extra focus on highlighting member businesses in our Automotive sector. We have over 25 businesses in our community that assist with all types of motor vehicle needs. Through a creative video content campaign we shared about seven businesses in the automotive sector, bringing more attention to why Strathcona is one of the best areas in Vancouver for auto services. 

In June we launched a Strathcona Brewery Week campaign, a week-long showcase to celebrate the thriving brewery scene in Strathcona. It was a successful pilot with room to grow into an annual campaign that continues to strengthen Strathcona as a recognized brewery hub. The campaign earned coverage in Vancouver Is Awesome and The Georgia Straight, as well as over 120K impressions through a media partnership with Do604. New audiences were engaged through a Do604 giveaway, brewery trivia contest, Just Here For the Beer Radio podcast show, and engaging Reels created by the Strathcona BIA for each brewery.  

Throughout the summer we’ve been focused on promoting both member and community events in Strathcona, including the Powell Street Festival, musical concerts, Vancouver Mural Festival, and Bike to Shop.   

Community Sponsorships

Fostering a sustainable and flourishing cultural community is important to us. We continue to provide community sponsorships year over year so that other local organizations serving the economic resilience of the district are supported. For the 2021/2022 fiscal year those included The Powell Street Festival, Eastside Culture Crawl, Coldest Night of the Year, HAVE Culinary Training Society, HUB Cycling Bike To Shop, Monstercat Compound, Vancouver Japanese Language School, and Carnegie Outreach Centre for a National Indigenous People’s Day community initiative.

Looking Ahead

Since launching our commercial district placebrand in late summer of 2020, our marketing initiatives have been focused on building district awareness and targeting visitors to come discover the area and the businesses here. Investing in a strong commercial placebrand has been an important foundation of distinguishing ourselves from other districts and communicating our unique strengths as a place to work, live, play, and invest. As we continue to take measure of both member needs and the work of developing the economic vision of the district, our marketing efforts will continue to evolve and improve as we reflect on the target audiences and how we reach them. We plan to put more attention on developing campaigns that target workforce development and labour retention, as well as specific business sector retention, attraction, and investment programs. A strong place identity for our commercial district will continue to play an important role in these efforts, in addition to placemaking initiatives that continue to enhance and activate public space in Strathcona.

In the lead up to this year’s AGM we are sharing a series of reports with our business community on all that we’ve been up to in service to you, our members. Next up, Marketing, Promotions, and Sponsorships!

Last September, after months of engagement and brand strategy development, we launched our new commercial district placebrand for Strathcona. Our brand celebrates all the people and businesses that make Strathcona different and exceptional. Despite the challenges of COVID-19 to bring people together, over this past year we’ve managed to bring our new placebrand to life in the streets and across digital channels. Through storytelling and activations we showcase what our members do to make Strathcona a vibrant and resilient community. Here’s how we’ve been bringing Strathcona to the hearts and minds of people across the Lower Mainland, welcoming everyone to come as they are, whoever they are.

New Website and Directory

We launched a new website that showcases the distinct character of our commercial district and draws people in to discover something different in Strathcona. A comprehensive member directory features all the businesses in Strathcona across our varied sectors. Members can now easily access our program services and information about what we do on behalf of the district. Since launching the website it’s been visited 19,880 times by 6504 unique users.

District Banners

We continue to maintain 400 street pole banners across the district. The current wordmap design of place names on our banners leans into the diversity of the district of Strathcona. The refreshed design and colours bring vibrancy and pride of place to our streets.

#DoDifferent and Member Features

The inspiration behind our #DoDifferent hashtag are the stories of people and businesses in Strathcona doing things in their own unique and unexpected ways. Working with professional photographers and videographers, we’re capturing more original member portraits, behind the scenes photos, and video footage than ever before. We also amplify the content that our business members and community visitors share. We have featured a total of 72 unique Strathcona businesses across our social media channels in the last year. In that time we’ve seen a 56% growth in followers on our Instagram channel. As part of our focus to increase engaging video content, we’ve published two district promotional videos, three business feature videos, and 20 Instagram Reels. Our video content alone has reached 38,733 cumulative views across our social platforms.

Halloween Hop

In October 2020 we held our first ever Halloween Hop in partnership with the Strathcona Community Policing Centre, Strathcona Residents Association, and Raycam Centre. Eleven businesses and organizations in and around the 800 Block of East Hastings took part in this family-friendly trick-or-treat event. Local employees dressed up in fabulous Halloween costumes to safely hand out candy outside their businesses, and event-goers of all ages enjoyed some Halloween family fun.

Dine Strathcona

Our November Dine Strathcona campaign brought together 17 businesses in Strathcona’s hospitality community to showcase the neighbourhood’s vibrant culinary scene while raising funds to provide support for vulnerable individuals in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Participating dining establishments offered a feature dish throughout the two-week event period, with proceeds from each dish ordered donated to the WISH Drop-In Centre. In addition to dining in, Dine Strathcona encouraged people to order take-out and delivery options to accommodate the challenging health order restrictions on restaurants at that time. The campaign was covered by 32 media articles, and earned 9.4 million impressions from traditional media. By working with local food influencers, the social media related posts of the campaign earned 1.21 million impressions. Despite the timing of the health order restrictions, over 640 feature dishes were sold in the two-week time frame, which amounted to approximately $10,000 in cumulative sales.

Gift Big Shop Small

In December, to support our retail sector, we ran a Gift Big Shop Small campaign to support shopping locally for the holiday season. Customers were encouraged to spend $25 or more at three participating locations in order to win a $25 Visa card to support shopping local. Nine Strathcona businesses took part, and many happy customers enjoyed discovering all of Strathcona’s unique offerings for the holidays.

Love Your City

In February, Strathcona joined 15 other neighbourhoods across Vancouver to run the Love Your City Contest, a call to get out, explore our city, and find LOVE in our neighbourhoods. Event-goers could enter the city-wide contest by finding love related murals and installations in each neighbourhood and posting them to their Instagram profile. Plus, in the week leading up to Valentine’s Day we did a daily prize giveaway on our Instagram channel to local businesses and received over 2000 contest entries!

Automotive Sector Promotion

We have over 25 businesses in our community that assist with all types of motor vehicle needs. Our Automotive sector campaign in April highlighted five participating auto-sector businesses and supported them to run in-store and online contests to help engage existing and new customers. The campaign received 364 cumulative contest entries across the five businesses, featured original photography and quotes from sector employees on our social media, and helped solidify why Strathcona is one of the best areas in Vancouver for auto services.

Takeout Strathcona

In an effort to support our restaurant sector when Provincial health restrictions started up again in April and May of 2020, we ran a Takeout Strathcona campaign to encourage people to keep on supporting their favourite Strathcona dining establishments by ordering take-out and delivery. By raffling off gift cards to local restaurants through weekly Instagram contests, we encouraged new customers to discover the amazing dining options we have here. We showcased our favourite takeout items with fun weekly Reels on Instagram that earned over 15,000 impressions across our platforms.

Art Walk Strathcona

Strathcona is home to some of the most notable contemporary art galleries in Vancouver and across the country. In May and June we ran our inaugural Art Walk Strathcona campaign to celebrate our gallery sector. Strathcona’s galleries came together to bring a diverse selection of contemporary art from Indigenous and Canadian artists to the streets on billboards along East Hastings. Art Walk Strathcona invited people to take a self-guided walk to discover the billboard images, and explore the associated exhibitions taking place throughout May and June in Strathcona’s gallery district. In addition to the billboard campaign, we featured participating galleries on our social media channels, and created a transit ad for Art Walk Strathcona that reached communities across the Lower Mainland. Art Walk Strathcona reached over 20,000 users across digital channels.

PATIO

The Temporary Expedited Patio Permit program meant it was a patio season in Vancouver like no other. To amplify the patio dining experience and to encourage customers to dine on patios all summer long, Strathcona BIA joined 15 other districts for the promotional PATIO campaign, which included a city-wide contest to crown the best patios in the city. An online patio map featuring all the patios across Vancouver, including those in Strathcona, was distributed widely by several campaign media partners. People were encouraged to follow along @patiovancouver to enter daily contest opportunities. Over on our own Instagram channel we shared a steady stream of patio pics and videos to highlight the excellent patio options in Strathcona this year.

To learn more about the Temporary Expedited Patio Permit program visit our advocacy report.

Bike to Shop

Strathcona was a community sponsor of HUB Cycling’s Bike to Shop event in August, along with 20 other participating districts across Metro Vancouver. Nine local businesses in our neighbourhood signed up to offer sweet deals and delicious freebies to customers who biked to their shop during the event. To celebrate Bike to Shop in Strathcona we sponsored a Knowledge HUB outside of the Landyachtz Factory store where people could enjoy free basic bike maintenance, complimentary snacks, and giveaways from Strathcona businesses. 2245 people registered for the event, and many of those participants discovered businesses in Strathcona as a result.

Community Sponsorships

Fostering a sustainable and flourishing cultural community is important to us. We continue to provide community sponsorships year over year so that other local organizations serving the economic resilience of the district are supported. For the 2020/2021 fiscal year those included, The Powell Street Festival, Eastside Culture Crawl, Coldest Night of Year, WISH Drop-In Centre, and nəćamat Urban Indigenous Women’s Village of Wellness, a community wellness event for Indigenous women in Strathcona.