Celebrating Pacifica's Strong Economic Recovery and the Impact of the City Marketing Initiative
Dear Members of the Pacifica City Council,
It has been a joy to work with the outstanding team at the City of Pacifica over the past two years, communicating and collaborating with local businesses and organizations to launch exciting new programs that have made a meaningful and positive impact on the quality of life of Pacifica residents and business owners.
CDA was brought onboard in late 2021 to audit the City’s marketing efforts, resources, and opportunities. In February of 2022, the scope of our relationship was expanded to include hands-on marketing services, especially:
1. Launching and greatly expanding engagement and revenue from the Shop Pacifica eGift card program
2. Piloting the Pacifica Workations Program
3. Providing creative production services, including designing and installing new banners along Palmetto
4. Expanding the reach and impact of the City’s Facebook and Instagram profiles, and providing year-round PR services to promote events, businesses, and attractions The objective of these efforts was to boost local and visitor spending, thereby supporting the City’s wonderful and unique local businesses while also bringing in an excellent return on investment for the city’s essential sales tax and TOT (hotel tax) revenues.
1. Launching and greatly expanding engagement and revenue from the Shop Pacifica eGift card program
Shop Pacifica is a community eGift card program that encourages local spending, and it has risen steadily in popularity with local merchants and the public alike in the past two years.
The city leveraged CDA to bring the Shop Pacifica eGift card program from concept to reality, through a number of important activities. CDA first produced the branding, creative designs, and messaging for the program, as well as the strategy and outreach to engage merchants and the public.
Next, CDA produced a substantial volume of informational and marketing content, both for the shoppers that would buy the cards, and also the many merchants learning to use the program for the first time. This included the creation of printable materials for the various point of sale systems to aid merchants’ new employees in redeeming the cards when a shopper presented one.
Extensive phone and email outreach was performed by CDA, and an interactive webinar was hosted for interested merchants to help grow participation and enthusiasm throughout the business community while answering any concerns and questions.
CDA’s eorts helped the program grow from 10 merchants in December of 2021, to 20 merchants by February of 2022, to 53 merchants as of December, 2023.
At the same time, CDA has worked with the business community to coordinate and execute a number of marketing campaigns for the program, bringing in $89,200 in revenue to local businesses. This is double the city’s total investment to date in the program, including CDA’s eorts, all advertising spend, and promotional “BOGO” funds. **Figure 1: Shop Pacifica Results to Date**
**Figure 2: Shop Pacifica Return on Investment**
2. Successfully piloting the Pacifica Workations Program The Pacifica Workations program was launched in the Summer of 2023 to support Pacifica hotels and reduce the number of vacant hotel rooms during the work week. Hotels were onboarded, and a brief marketing campaign was launched in 2023 to test/pilot the program. At least 48 multi-day room reservations were made during this initial pilot that could be directly attributed to the Workations campaign, creating approximately $32,904 in new revenue for hotels, and a projected $15,199 in new spending at other local merchants from these visitors, for a total of more than $48,000 injected into the local economy.
The website Marketing Sherpa even published an article on the program’s success. **Figure 3: Pacifica Workations Return on Investment**
Together, the Shop Pacifica and Pacifica Workations programs accounted for $133,000 in local spending, with engagement and enthusiasm for both programs continuing to grow within the community.
3. Providing creative production services, including designing and installing new banners along Palmetto
In addition to the work done for Shop Pacifica and the Pacifica Workations programs, CDA has provided ongoing graphic design and video editing services for the city of Pacifica, including the creation of sponsorship presentations, social media content, event promotions, ad campaigns, email marketing graphics, and the design and installation of the new banners displayed along Palmetto.
4. Expanding the reach and impact of the City’s Facebook and Instagram profiles, and providing year-round PR services to promote events, businesses, and attractions Through ongoing PR outreach to TV, print, and digital media outlets, as well as curation of the City’s Facebook and Instagram profiles, CDA has continued to build long-term regional awareness and excitement for Pacifica’s businesses, events, and cultural & natural attractions.
CDA doubled the total followers/subscribers for the city’s social media accounts, quadrupled the number of people being reached, and greatly increased public interest and the amount of discourse about the city on social media, as seen by an increase in the volume of key hashtags related to Pacifica by 50%.
**Figure 4: City Social Media**
**Figure 5: Public Interest**
In addition, CDA brought the City of Pacifica to the attention of Visit California, creating a new page on the Visit California website for Pacifica, and also working closely with the Visit California PR team to get the city’s attractions and businesses consistently promoted in Visit California’s articles - 18 times in 22 months.
**Figure 6: Visit California**
Other PR efforts during this time drove numerous “best of” and “places to visit” features in travel publications, as well as coverage of city events on local broadcast television news. In total, CDA was responsible for 795 pieces of media coverage and more than 16 million estimated digital views.
**Figure 7: Travel Articles**
**Figure 8: TV Event Coverage**
**Figure 8: PR Media Exposure**
Figures 9-11, included in the attached PDF, show a “before and after” of how the City’s cumulative efforts – including the important marketing activities performed by CDA – contributed to significant post-pandemic sales tax and TOT (hotel tax) recovery between Fiscal Year 21 and FY 234:
**Figure 9: Sales Tax Revenue, Before and After**
**Figure 10: TOT (Hotel Tax) Revenue, Before and After** **Figure 11: Combined Sales Tax + TOT Revenue, Before and After** It is important to note that this recovery happened despite all the visitor-generated revenue that was lost to communities near San Francisco over the past two years, due to San Francisco’s own tourism dropping significantly even after the pandemic (and with it, the pool of prospective visitors coming to Pacifica).
The entire community should take immense pride in these extraordinary results, and we extend our heartfelt appreciation to the City staff, local business leaders, non-profit organizations, and many others for their unwavering involvement and community spirit.
Figure 4, included in the attached PDF, illustrates how the City’s total investment in CDA accounts for less than 4% of this annual revenue increase. **Figure 12: Return on Investment**
While many factors have played a part in Pacifica’s strong recovery, we are confident that the City marketing program spearheaded by CDA has played a vital role. The CDA contract is ending on January 31st, 2024. It is our hope that we can continue to work with the City moving forward, building upon the foundation we have worked hard to establish.
In closing, we want to express our gratitude to the City Council for giving us this opportunity and supporting the economic recovery of the community. Together, we are confident that we can make an even stronger impact in years to come. We look forward to being a part of Pacifica’s continued growth and success, and the continued success of local merchants. **Figure 13: Merchant Testimonial**
All the best,
Kevin Almeida
Managing Director, Creative Digital Agency, Inc.