Placemaking Tag

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, COVID-19 Recovery and Placemaking.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to challenge our members and the community in diverse and extensive ways. Supporting our members through these challenging times has been the top priority for the Strathcona BIA. The Board has been working to apply a COVID-19 recovery lens to all board decisions and ensure that our programming and services support members through COVID-19 and facilitate recovery efforts. We have also continued to invest in placemaking initiatives in Strathcona to attract people to the area and bring new vibrant spaces that inspire and connect people.

COVID-19 Task Force

At the beginning of the pandemic we were the first BIA to join the COVID-19 Community-Coordinated Response Network, over 40 organizations operating in the Downtown Eastside working together to address the impacts of COVID-19. This group continues to meet and collaborate on ways to support the well-being of the community, expanding their scope of work to address other challenges such as heat wave weather events and the opioid crisis. Showing up as a community partner and building relationships with groups in the community who are working to create a thriving neighbourhood is integral to our success as an organization.

COVID-19 Communications

We’ve increased our direct member communications through COVID-19. We continue providing resources and information on available COVID-19 resources and business supports through our e-newsletter channel and social media channels. When new targeted grants came online to help hard-hit businesses or when new health order regulations were announced, we were quick to share about them with our members immediately, and we’ll continue to do so as long as the pandemic is impacting you and your operations.

COVID-19 Recovery Grant

We launched a COVID-19 Recovery Grant pilot program in September 2020 to support our business and property owners affected by the pandemic. Matching grants up to $1000 were used to help members manage unexpected expenses from COVID-19, attract customers, improve security, and invest in placemaking improvements. We were excited to award $15,620 to 22 Strathcona BIA members across multiple sectors and different sub-districts, for projects ranging from patio installations, to security fence upgrades, to bulk PPE supplies. The matching grants were put towards projects that resulted in a total investment of almost $50,000 in area improvements and recovery supplies.

Safe and Welcoming Grant

Building on the success of the Recovery Grant, in July of this year we launched the Safe and Welcoming Grant. We heard from members in our Safety Survey earlier in the year that more investment in environmental safety is a priority. Specifically, many members felt that improvements in things like lighting, street and crosswalk infrastructure, and more green space will have a large impact on the overall safety of the area. We took the learnings from the COVID-19 Recovery Grant pilot program and created this new grant program to provide members with the funding and flexibility to address their specific needs while also keeping a district-wide perspective. The goal of this program is to help our members make safety and beautification investments that will attract people to the area and create a more safe and welcoming community for all – small changes add up to big impact! Since the launch of the program, seven businesses have applied and are in the process of starting on safety and beautification projects. Applications continue to be accepted here. 

New Murals

We’re excited to have brought several new murals to the Strathcona neighbourhood this year in partnership with Vancouver Mural Festival and local property owners. Artist Sitji Chou created a mural piece called Ripple at Noble on 1001 Venables Street. The artist hopes the waves, lilies, and koi mingling in between will instill a sense of tranquility and whimsy to all who see the mural. Another piece includes Benjamin Stone’s bold new work at Container Brewing, titled No Arrival. A third mural at 603 Powell Street is part of the Black Strathcona Resurgence Project (BSRP). The BSRP is a project to reclaim Black visibility in Strathcona, an area historically populated by Vancouver’s Black community. The BSRP mural titled Watch Over this Child by artist Sasha Mbabazi, is a call to action to take responsibility for the wellbeing of each other. And the Thomas Cannell mural Give It Time, that we sponsored in 2020, has become a standout mural in the district and an East Hastings landmark. Public art has the power to help strengthen the connections between all who share space here, and we are so proud to be a part of supporting more murals for all to enjoy. 

We have also invested in mural restoration and upkeep. Last year, we repaired and refreshed the mural at 812 East Cordova, an amazing colourful mural depicting the Squamish Valley and Stawamus Chief Mountain, among others, and we remain invested in ensuring murals in Strathcona are well maintained.

Adding and Refreshing Tree Planters

The Hastings Urban Tree Planters are an urban greening initiative going since 2014 that responds to the lack of trees along some of the streets in Strathcona. The tree planters bring life to our streetscapes by adding greenery through resilient tree varieties and colour through vibrant murals on the planter exteriors. Over the years, the planters have provided a platform for many emerging artists, and this year we are honoured to dedicate this visual space for an Indigenous artist to create a statement-making impact along East Hastings. Following a selection process with Vancouver Mural Fest, we’re excited that the planter murals are in the process of being refreshed by artist Zac George. The design, selected in part through consultation with participants in the planter program, is called Sacred Mountains and we can’t wait to see it completed soon. We’ll also be adding four new planters to the 800 Block of East Hastings, expanding the total number of tree planters in the community to 16.