1 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
04 07
13 20
30 37
39 45 ADDITIONAL DA T A 1.2.10
CONTRACTOR CAPABILITY AND REFERENCES 1.2.9
SUB-CONSULT ANTS 1.2.8
CREA TIVE DEVELOPMENT AND REOURCES 1.2.6
MEDIA 1.2.5
1.2.4 RESEARCH, STRA TEGY , AND CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT
INTRODUCTION 1.2.3
ASSIGNED PERSONNEL 1.2.7
3 COVER LETTER
City of Santa Clarita Visit Santa Clarita / Economic Development Attn: Michele Arima, Buyer, Administrative Services 23920 V alencia Blvd., Ste. 295 Santa Clarita, CA 91355 RE: Proposal #ED-25-26-38, Advertising Campaign
Dear Michele Arima, the TMD Advisory Board, and the City of Santa Clarita Economic Development team,
The most important anecdote in this response is on page 5, where the City of Arroyo Grande’s RevPAR through February 2026 sits 12.0% above the broader San Luis Obispo County’s 3.1% growth, measured by STR. We’ve called this out immediately because it answers the question this RFP is asking - How do we connect advertising spend to verified hotel visits, rather than to impressions or engagement metrics? The City’s signals throughout this RFP are consistent in that the next agency partner should deliver a more comprehensive, integrated approach where property-level attribution is a primary deliverable.
Commune is built for that work. We are a full-service, Los Angeles-based agency that runs strategy, research, media planning and buying, creative production, content development, project management, and reporting in-house under a single team. We built a proprietary measurement architecture called “BedHead” specifically for tourism and destination marketing organizations, because our clients got tired of campaign reports that did not connect to what was happening in our clients’ key landmarks and hotels. BedHead solves that problem.
The proposal that follows describes how we would deploy that capability for Visit Santa Clarita, while giving robust insights into our process and team for a full service engagement. If selected, the team you meet at the kick-off is the same team doing the work throughout. We’re a dedicated and veteran group of advertisers who care as much about results as we do creative production. We have invested in this proposal as carefully as we would invest in the work itself and hope that comes through as you review. Thank you very much for taking the time to get to know us and we look forward to doing the same with you,
Ryan La Rosa; Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer; Commune Communication Sincerely,
Ryan La Rosa
Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer
4 5
INTRODUCTION 1.2.3
Most destination marketing campaigns are lacking because measurement is lacking. Lots of folks can produce beautiful quarterly reports with fancy graphs and colors, but ultimately hotel occupancy stays flat because the focus is on the wrong things.
For years, tourism organizations have been handed dashboards that measure impressions, click- through rates, social engagement, time on site, and “earned media value.” All of it shows up on monthly reports but none of it tells you whether a visitor actually came to town and stayed in one of your hotels.
We built BedHead because we got tired of participating in that reality.
Commune is a full-service, Los Angeles-based advertising agency. We work for California cities and the organizations that promote them, and we have been doing it for over a decade. Recently, we built a media and measurement product specifically for travel and tourism organizations that we call BedHead because the most important metric in this business is heads in beds (see what we did there?).
BedHead connects media exposure to verified visits at named hotel properties using privacy-safe mobile device-ID data. Not clicks. Not impressions. Actual visits at named properties, attributed to the channels and feeder markets that drove them.
Throughout this presentation we’ll highlight examples of our work and approach, but few demonstrate the difference in our delivery more clearly than our work with the City of Arroyo Grande.
Through February 2026, Arroyo Grande’s RevPAR grew 12.0% versus the broader San Luis Obispo County’s 3.1%, measured by STR. That is nearly four times faster than the regional market in a year where most peers were flat or worse. Paso Robles, historically the marquee Central Coast destination, declined 8.1%. Arroyo Grande’s hotel occupancy through February rose 8.9% versus the county’s 1.5%. February alone: occupancy up 15.2%, RevPAR up 18.6%.
The number that tells the underlying story is more specific. Through March 22 of the current fiscal year, BedHead attributed 1,216 verified ad-exposed visits to Arroyo Grande at an average cost of $24.67 per visit. 23.85% of those visits converted to overnight stays at hotel partners. 58% landed Monday through Thursday, directly solving a need to increase midweek stays.
6 INTRODUCTION 1.2.3
Visit Santa Clarita’s RFP names this gap directly. Section 2 calls for “attribution of hotel bookings at the property level to specific advertising campaigns, channels, and conversion rates.” Section 6 names property-level attribution again as a campaign deliverable. The language tells us the TMD Advisory Board and Visit Santa Clarita’s staff have lived the same gap we just described. Y ou are not asking for impressions reporting in a different format. Y ou are asking for something the standard agency operating models cannot produce without costly outside partners.
The next section of our proposal response walks through how we develop the strategic framework that decides where BedHead deploys. The Media section walks through how the measurement architecture works and what it has produced for directly comparable clients. Then, the Creative section shows what the work looks like when the campaign side of the equation pulls equal weight with the measurement side. And then, of course, we’ll highlight the people that have built Commune into an emerging force in the California travel and tourism industry.
Thanks for tagging along so far…!
7 8
Throughout this section we’ll provide a deep dive into our model and how our integrated approach leads to groundbreaking work. We structure every destination engagement around four operating disciplines: Define, Design, Deploy, Diagnose.
DEFINE: RESEARCH AND STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK
Before any campaign runs, before any media is planned, before any concept is sketched, the question is: what is actually true and unique about this place? The answer determines everything that follows. We answer it through a four-part research model applied to every destination campaign:
• City. We want to understand Santa Clarita specifically. The terrain, the lodging inventory, the major attractions, the events calendar, the small-meetings and sports-tourism infrastructure, the cultural texture, the things beyond the surface that you only uncover through real conversations and real time spent. We understand the City’s growth priorities fall into three areas: expanding awareness of outdoor recreation and open-space assets including the new bike park, promoting William S. Hart Park, and existing trail infrastructure; growing small meetings, sports, and group business during shoulder season; and building a more sophisticated attribution infrastructure that connects advertising investment directly to hotel bookings at the property level. Each is emphasized as part of this step. • Category. We need to deeply understand the drive-market DMO marketing landscape in Southern California with an emphasis on the competitive set: Palm Springs, Ventura County, Santa Barbara, Orange County, and the broader Inland Empire. We want to determine what is working in the category, what is stale, and where the leading edge sits. • Consumer. We’re focused on at least two audiences to start: Leisure travelers within the 400-mile drive radius the TMD already prioritizes. Meeting planners and group-business decision-makers for the small-to-mid scale (under 300 attendees) that fits SCV’s facility profile. Each audience requires its own segmentation, its own message work, and its own channel logic.
1.2.4 RESEARCH, STRATEGY , AND CAMPAIGN
MANAGEMENT
1.2.4 RESEARCH, STRATEGY , AND CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT
9 • Culture. Let’s understand how people in feeder markets actually plan trips in 2026. Where do they search? What triggers consideration? What are they reading? Who do they trust? This now includes AI-mediated trip planning behavior, the same surface area RFP Section 3 names: Santa Clarita’s visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and similar platforms is part of the category landscape, not an optional add-on.
Per RFP Section 4.1.1, the research draws on at least three data sources. Ours pull from BedHead’s own Location Visitation Reporting data and the patterns it surfaces about feeder markets and conversion behavior, STR lodging performance data, first-party platform analytics from Google, Meta, and the OT As, and Visit California and regional DMO partnership data for co-op opportunity assessment. The 30-day pre-campaign research deliverable named in RFP Section 6 is the output of this work, formalized as a strategic positioning document that travels into the rest of the engagement.
DESIGN: CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT
Open any tourism brochure from the last fifty years and you will see some version of “Shop. Dine.
Play.” Or “Eat. Stay. Explore.” Or “Discover. Indulge. Repeat.” The reason this trope is so pervasive is that it’s easy. Nobody on the team did the discovery work to figure out what is actually specific to the place and no one on the client side had the energy to push them.
We push back hard against this reality in every engagement. The test we apply to our own creative is this: if our campaign platform for Visit Santa Clarita could be picked up and dropped into another market and have it work, we did not do our jobs. The campaign should attract people to Santa Clarita because of what only Santa Clarita offers. Not what every other drive-market California destination offers.
For the City of Arroyo Grande, our campaign platform is built around the specific juxtapositions that make AG distinct from its Central Coast neighbors. It does not work for Pismo. It does not work for Cambria, Avila Beach or San Luis Obispo. It does not work for any destination other than the one it was built for, and that is the point.
1.2.4 RESEARCH, STRATEGY , AND CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT
10 For the Downtown Long Beach Alliance, the platform is “Opposite of Ordinary,” built around DTLB’s specific cultural texture as an alternative to surrounding destinations. Same principle. Different specifics.
As a result, both campaigns have been recognized with American Advertising Awards for specific creative outputs including copywriting, design, and campaign development.
For Visit Santa Clarita, the discovery and concepting process will produce a platform that names what only this destination has and only this destination delivers. The brief defines the territory and the creative pays it off in ways that reinforce resident pride and generates curiosity from potential visitors.
DEPLOY: PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND CAMPAIGN EXECUTION
We treat project management as its own deliverable with key principles driving our approach:
• Budget Management. Cost discipline starts at the bid and continues through monthly reconciliation and reporting. The TMD board sees pacing, expenditure, and variance on the same cadence as performance. No surprises.
• Continuity. The team named in this proposal is the team that will run the engagement. The people the City builds chemistry with on the kick-off call are the same people you trust to do the work day in, day out.
• In-house structure. Strategy, research, media, creative, content production, project management, and reporting all sit inside one shop. There is no creative-of-record sub- vendor producing assets the strategy team never sees. The structure removes hand-off friction and the cost layer that grows when work passes between organizations. It is the reason we’re fast on response time and budget accuracy. • T ransition management. Per Addendum 1, the selected agency is expected to manage a formal transition of brand assets, media vendor relationships, campaign performance data, and other materials from the incumbent provider. We are structured to absorb this transition quickly. The Project Lead and Media Director own the operational handover during the 60-to-90-day onboarding window, with the strategic and creative team running parallel discovery work so foundational research is in motion before campaign execution begins.
Operationally, this looks like weekly management of active campaigns, ongoing communication with City staff, scheduled board reporting, and accessibility to the Project Lead and senior team throughout. The RFP names monthly reconciliation, quarterly TMD presentations, the August 2026 kick-off, and the September 2026 research-concepts-timeline presentation as required milestones and we will ensure those are met carefully and fully.
1.2.4 RESEARCH, STRATEGY , AND CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT
11 DIAGNOSE: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND CONTINUOUS OPTIMIZATION Reporting that nobody acts on is reporting that wastes everyone’s time. Our diagnostic discipline is built so that every measurement cycle produces easy to understand insights, clear improvements, and real decisions. The reporting structure for the Visit Santa Clarita engagement is mapped to the RFP’s stated requirements:
• Monthly Performance dashboards - Covering BedHead visitation reporting, channel performance, audience behavior, and budget reconciliation. Format and content per the TMD’s preferred cadence.
• Quarterly Presentations - Presentations at TMD Advisory Board meetings, distilled into the format hotel GMs want to see. What is working at the property level? Where is the spend going? What is coming next?
• Bi-annual Council meetings or city presentations as required. • Annual Recap/Report - A comprehensive marketing report covering the full fiscal year (Visitation, media attribution, channel performance, creative effectiveness, recommendations for the next cycle, etc).
The point of this phase alongside the reporting is to eliminate the guesswork by optimizing spend, creative versions, and tactics based on real data. Channels with measurable visitation lift get more weight while audiences that did not convert get re-segmented. Creative gets revised against conversion patterns and feeder markets get rebalanced based on performance. Our operating model runs continuously as a system with rolling cycles which is consistent with your request for management and execution “inclusive of ongoing analysis, optimization and monthly reporting.”
1.2.4 RESEARCH, STRATEGY , AND CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT
12 WHAT THIS MEANS FOR VISIT SANTA CLARITA
By following our proven framework, we’ll produce the following for Visit Santa Clarita:
• A strategic positioning grounded in SCV’s actual category position that includes drive-market focus inside the 400-mile radius while emphasizing shoulder season (September through January) as the primary demand-shaping window, per the City’s stated focus in Addendum 1. • A wholly unique creative platform specific to Santa Clarita’s identity. • A project management discipline that holds budget, maintains team continuity, and operates on the meeting and reporting cadence TMD prefers.
• A performance management layer that turns every cycle of BedHead data into a decision about what changes in the next cycle.
The Media section that follows walks through the measurement architecture and channel mechanics that sit underneath this operating model.
1.2.4 RESEARCH, STRATEGY , AND CAMPAIGN MANAGEMENT
13 14
HOW BEDHEAD WORKS
BedHead is built on four operating steps, performed continuously across every campaign that runs on a Commune-managed media plan.
1. Research and define the T arget. We identify the real-world locations a campaign needs to influence. For Visit Santa Clarita, that means the 10 TMD properties, the major attractions that drive visit decisions (Six Flags Magic Mountain anchors that list), and any specific group-business venues the engagement prioritizes. These will be the destinations BedHead measures against.
For starting our initial evaluation, we surveyred 2025 visitation of mobile device ID for 3 Hotel Partners (Hotel Lexen, Best Western, and Hyatt Regency) and matched that with census data for the following visitor demographic insights:
• Wide Range of Age Groups: Visitation from all households with ages between ages 25- 65, but over indexing with ages 25-34 and 45-54 audience groups, and 23% of visitors households have children under the age of 18 in the home • Household Income (HHI): Median Income: $90k and consistently over 22% our hotel visitors have HHI over $150k
• Education Levels: 60%+ of hotel visitors have a 2 year degree or higher (Bachelors, Masters, etc)
• T op Ethnicities: 42% White, 28% for Hispanic and third highest of 12% are Asian, with 18% for African American and Minority Groups.
• T op Affifnity Categories: Movie Entertainment, Amusement Attractions, Family Restaurants, and Gym/Fitness.
2. Capture and target the audience. BedHead works on audience opt-in, privacy-safe mobile device-ID data from over 200k+ mobile apps. No personal identifiers are collected or stored.
We build audiences from observed travel-intent behavior, prior visitation to comparable destinations, and feeder-market geography. T argeting audiences across multiple media channels for brand consistency across screens, devices, and ad inventory.
3. Attribute exposure to visitation. After ad exposure, BedHead tracks mobile device visitation to our isolated locations of TMD properties. Attribution is a verified visit from ad exposure, not a click or an impression. Visits are reported at the property level for each Hotel partner. Feeder market, media channel, ad creative, and timing of visitation all surface as reporting in the dashboard.
4. Optimize from observed behavior. Each cycle informs the next. Media channel investment shifts toward what drives visits. Audience targeting refines based on which feeder markets are converting. Creative iterates against what drove the strongest visitation lift and engagement.
Our work and optimizing system is in continuous motion, always refining to provide stronger ROI overtime.
MEDIA 1.2.5
MEDIA 1.2.5
15 The result is a reporting layer Visit Santa Clarita can trust to answer every question and maximize every dollar. Campaign performance becomes “1,847 visits to TMD properties (broken out by specific property) this month, up 23% from the prior month, with the strongest growth in the Bay Area cohort,” not “8.2 million impressions and a 6.1% engagement rate.” One point about BedHead’s cost is worth emphasizing. The measurement architecture is integrated into Commune’s agency operating model. There is no separate platform-license cost or any equivalent third-party DMO attribution tool competing for budget inside the not-to-exceed figure.
The full $460,000 is available to apply against working media, creative, and content. Agencies without a native attribution layer would carry a meaningful third-party platform fee against the overall budget.
A Living Example - Arroyo Grande:
Through March 22 of the past quarter, BedHead has measured visitation to seven named Arroyo Grande hotel properties:
Property V erified Ad-Exposed Visits
Best Western Casa Grande 83
Hampton Inn & Suites 71
Aloha Inn 48
Days Inn 36
The Agrarian Hotel 31
Arroyo Village Inn 11
The Beachway Inn 10
16 In a single quarter hotel-attributed visits totaled 290. An additional 926 visits landed across the AG Village shopping and dining cluster. T otal ad-exposed visits: 1,216. Cost per exposed visit: $24.67.
Conversion to overnight stays: 23.85% of tracked visits. Mid-week distribution (Monday through Thursday): 58%.
The same dataset shows where those visits originated. Measurement from the last quarter indicated 309 visits from Bay Area DMAs and 457 from Southern California DMAs, with a smaller set distributed across nurture markets. This is the feeder-market intelligence that lets us reallocate media weekly against what is converting.
“For years we had been running marketing campaigns for the City and its hotels. We never had any idea what was actually working. Once we switched over to Commune and BedHead, we can now see what works and create campaigns that are driving increasingly effective results.”
— Visit Arroyo Grande representative
Additional Success Stories
The same measurement architecture is deployed across several California tourism, BID, and destination clients. The headline outcomes:
• Downtown Long Beach Alliance: 12,000+
verified hotel visits and 6,500+ visits to key
attractions over the campaign window.
Cost per visitor reduced significantly
across cycles. The campaign, “Opposite of
Ordinary,” is now in its third year.
• Discover T orrance: 16,900+ verified hotel
visits in 2024 alone. Search, social, CTV,
and mobile working as a coordinated layer
with BedHead reporting the conversions.
• Visit Camarillo: Campaigns built off
historical location data to reconnect
lapsed visitors. Measurable lift in repeat
visitation.
• Visit T uolumne County: Audience
segmentation refined from prior-visitation
data over a three-year engagement, with
measured conversion improvement Y oY .
Downtown Long Beach
T uolumne County
City of Camarillo
City of T orrance
MEDIA 1.2.5
17 Media buying experience and channel specialties
Commune plans and buys all media in-house including media strategy, channel allocation, vendor negotiation, campaign management, and BedHead measurement all run from one team. The media channels we plan and buy against, and that BedHead measures across:
Connected TV (CTV) / Over the T op (OTT). We have inventory available across publishers including Netflix, Hulu, Roku, Amazon Prime, Paramount, etc. Our audience-first targeting approach maximizes budget efficiency across publishers and consistently achieves 90%+ video completion rates on large home screens. Across BedHead-instrumented campaigns, CTV/OTT has been the top visitation driver over the past year and remains a core performance channel for drive-market DMOs through feeder-market geo-targeting.
Programmatic Display and High-Impact Units. Standard banners for retargeting, plus high- impact interstitials and rich-media placements deployed at trip-planning moments. In Arroyo Grande’s current fiscal year, interstitials and display contributed measurable visit lift even at lower budget thresholds than CTV and support brand frequency.
T ravel publishers and OTAs. Expedia Group, Booking.com, T ripAdvisor, Kayak, and Priceline provide access to in-market trip-planning audiences, while T ravel + Leisure, Condé Nast T raveler, AFAR, and Sunset deliver high-intent editorial travel environments. These publishers are valuable drivers for hotel demand, but they also limit long-term growth due to restricted third-party measurement and limited sharing of first-party conversion data with DMOs and hotel partners.
Our strategy leverages these platforms while expanding beyond them to create stronger audience ownership, loyalty capture, and retargeting opportunities that reduce reliance on closed publisher ecosystems.
Paid social as a recommended addition. The current RFP scope does not include paid social, but we recommend its inclusion as a value-add layer. In Arroyo Grande, recent Meta campaigns delivered a 7.06% click-through rate in the Los Angeles cohort, several multiples above industry travel-vertical benchmarks. Meta operates as the primary engagement and retargeting layer in BedHead-measured programs. TikT ok, Instagram Reels, and Pinterest serve as audience-extension and creative-distribution platforms. Adding paid social to the Visit Santa Clarita program would extend the campaign’s measurement-attached reach into mid-funnel consideration.
Paid search. Google Ads on high-intent travel and trip-planning queries. Arroyo Grande’s search campaigns have delivered a 6.76% overall CTR through the current fiscal year, with over 600 measurable conversions tied to landing-page actions towards hotel bookings.
Audio and podcast. Spotify, Pandora, and iHeart for audio. T ravel-, family-, and lifestyle- aligned podcast networks for complementary exposure. Audio drives consideration in feeder markets when paired with CTV, and can be measured for visitation to each Hotel partner.
MEDIA 1.2.5
18 Out-of-home. Fixed and Digital billboards in feeder-market corridors, plus we retarget billboards with digital display banners that connects OOH exposure to subsequent digital ad delivery and allows hotel visitation measurement. For Arroyo Grande, a single Highway 101 fixed billboard contributed 342 additional verified visits during Q1 2026.
Optional additional services:
Section 5 of the RFP names three optional add-ons. We are equipped to deliver each. • Search Engine Marketing. Ongoing SEM and SEO optimization for VisitSantaClarita.com, SEM (PPC) management across major search engines, and SEM reporting separate from the broader BedHead dashboard. Strategy and on-going optimizations for brand positioning in and around new search “ Ai Overviews” for capturing search demand of key target audiences. • Artificial Intelligence Optimization. Ongoing AIO work to position VisitSantaClarita.com content for inclusion and accurate representation across ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, Perplexity, and similar AI-generated answer platforms. The program covers structured content development, topical authority strengthening, and monitoring of visibility, citation patterns, and inclusion trends. ChatGPT has also started their ad inventory capabilities and we have secured a partnership to have this new inventory access by Fall 2026. • Airport Advertising Placement Coordination. End-to-end management including vendor selection, contracting, production coordination, installation oversight, and performance tracking. For airports relevant to Santa Clarita’s drive- and fly-market mix (Hollywood Burbank, LAX, Bob Hope), we manage placement programs and integrate exposure into BedHead’s measurement layer wherever the venue’s data partners support it.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR VISIT SANTA CLARITA:
Ultimately, our approach produces the property-level attribution that the RFP names as a primary objective. It also produces the data-backed traveler analysis it names as the basis for campaign decisions. A few specific implications for the engagement:
• The 10 TMD hotels become 10 measurement endpoints. Our media campaigns report back to which properties received verified visits from ad exposure by tracking mobile devices, visitation by feeder markets, plus which media channels and creative. For this tracking, custom perimeters are drawn around each hotel for measuring foot traffic, and here are three examples of these perimeters for Hotel Lexen (left), Hyatt Regency (middle), and Best Western (right).
19 • Major attractions become secondary measurement endpoints. Six Flags Magic Mountain, the Westfield Valencia T own Center, the Hyatt Regency’s meeting facilities, the Santa Clarita Aquatic Center for sports events. We can answer questions like “did the Bay Area CTV campaign measurably drive incremental visits to Six Flags, and what was the downstream conversion rate to TMD hotel stays?”
• Feeder markets become testable hypotheses rather than assumptions. Feeder markets become testable hypotheses rather than assumptions. The City’s stated primary feeder markets (Bay Area, Greater Phoenix, and San Diego) are starting points. Secondary feeders (Santa Barbara, Las Vegas, Fresno, Sacramento, Bakersfield) are testable through BedHead’s measurement layer, with media allocation adjusted weekly against observed conversion behavior.
• Our Mobile Device ID research from 2025 visitation data confirms that over 50% of visitors consistently originate from the greater Los Angeles area. Primary feeder markets outside Los Angeles include the Bay Area, San Diego, Phoenix, and Bakersfield, while secondary feeder markets include Las Vegas, Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, Sacramento, and Fresno.
The data can also be segmented by individual TMD hotel partners. In 2025, Los Angeles accounted for:
• Shoulder season becomes the period where BedHead’s mid-week visit shaping work pays off. AG’s current fiscal year campaign is producing 58% Monday-through-Thursday visitation. The same demand-shaping applies to Santa Clarita’s shoulder months (September through January), which becomes the period where BedHead’s mid-week visit shaping work pays off.
• The competitive set becomes a benchmark we can monitor in parallel. Drive-market substitutes including Big Bear, Palm Springs, T emecula, Ojai, and Ventura County are visible to us through STR’s regional data and through BedHead-measured share-of-search and share-of-visit signals.
73% 85% 53%
of Hyatt Regency
visitor traffic
of Hotel Lexen
visitor traffic
of Best Western
visitor traffic
MEDIA 1.2.5
20 21
The work that follows is the proof of the principle described in Section 1.2.4: destination-specific creative paired with destination-specific measurement, executed by a single in-house team. Each example below is a Commune engagement where the same operating model proposed for Visit Santa Clarita has been deployed and measured. References for each engagement are at the foot of the entry
Outcomes May, 2025 - February 2026, measured by STR and BedHead:
• Arroyo Grande RevPAR grew 12.0% versus the broader San Luis Obispo County’s 3.1% • AG occupancy rose 8.9% versus the county’s 1.5%
• 1,216 verified ad-exposed visits at $24.67 average cost per visit • 23.85% of tracked visits converted to overnight stays at hotel partners • 58% mid-week visitation distribution (Monday through Thursday) • The engagement is now in its third operating year
Reference: Sheridan Bohlken, Executive Director, AGTBID. [email protected]; 805-440-5024
CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT AND REOURCES 1.2.6
Visit Arroyo Grande
Scope: Brand strategy, creative campaign
development, media planning and reporting, website
design and development, social media development,
photo and video production, BedHead measurement.
Visit Arroyo Grande is the City of Arroyo Grande’s
official tourism marketing organization, supported
through the Arroyo Grande T ourism Business
Improvement District (AGTBID). Commune was selected
in 2024 to reposition the destination and bring a level of rigor and accuracy to its measurement structure.
The brief described a Central Coast community with a
walkable village, culinary scene, outdoor recreation, and distinct local character, but one historically defined in relation to its more notable neighbors.
The discovery process surfaced what was unique to AG
and ownable only by AG. From that, we built the “That’s Arroyo Grande” creative platform, recognized with an
American Advertising Award, and deployed it across
Connected TV, paid social, paid search, programmatic
display, and OOH. Every campaign runs on the BedHead
platform, with attribution to AG’s seven named hotel
properties and a feeder-market view that informs
weekly budget reallocation.
CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT AND REOURCES 1.2.6
22 Visit Arroyo Grande
Scope: Brand strategy, creative campaign development, media planning and reporting, website design and development, social media development, photo and video production, BedHead measurement.
23 Visit Arroyo Grande
Scope: Brand strategy, creative campaign development, media planning and reporting, website design and development, social media development, photo and video production, BedHead measurement.
CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT AND REOURCES 1.2.6
24 Outcomes through the most recent measurement window:
• 12,000+ verified hotel visits attributed to BedHead-measured campaign exposure • 6,500+ verified visits to key attractions in the district • Significant cost-per-visitor reduction across measurement cycles • Increased website engagement aligned with visitation lift • The campaign is now in its third year of operation
Reference: Austin Metoyer, CEO, Downtown Long Beach Alliance. [email protected]. 562.436.4259.
CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT AND REOURCES 1.2.6
Downtown Long Beach Alliance
Scope: Brand strategy, creative campaign
development, placemaking, website design and
development, social media, paid media planning and
reporting, BedHead measurement.
The Downtown Long Beach Alliance (DLBA) is the entity
responsible for destination marketing in Downtown Long
Beach, one of California’s largest business improvement districts. The district includes more than 2,000
businesses, a major port, and a growing residential
population. DLBA ’s destination marketing function
operates as the DMO equivalent for the Downtown Long
Beach destination, running consumer-facing campaigns
that drive visitation to the district’s hotels, restaurants, and attractions.
Commune has partnered with DLBA since 2018. The
challenge has been consistent across the engagement:
Downtown Long Beach is consistently overlooked
in favor of nearby destinations despite its scale and
character. The work began with a rebrand to establish
a more recognizable identity and move away from
familiar tourism language. The most recent campaign
platform is “Opposite of Ordinary,” recognized with
an American Advertising Award, built around the
specific cultural texture that distinguishes DTLB from
surrounding destinations.
CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT AND REOURCES 1.2.6
25 Downtown Long Beach Alliance
Scope: Brand strategy, creative campaign development, placemaking, website design and development, social media, paid media planning and reporting, BedHead measurement.
26 Downtown Long Beach Alliance
Scope: Brand strategy, creative campaign development, placemaking, website design and development, social media, paid media planning and reporting, BedHead measurement.
CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT AND REOURCES 1.2.6
27 Outcomes since 2021:
• The “I am 4” campaign continues in active deployment, sustained by strong brand guidelines and consistent merchant buy-in across the corridor.
• Local business owners participate directly in campaign storytelling, with the brand functioning as a platform for the corridor’s tenants rather than as a top-down marketing message. • For the BedHead deployment specifically in 2024, Commune achieved the following:
1. 18M+ impressions served and 174,246 clicks to the 4th St. website
2. Overall campaign CTR of 0.93%, well above travel/tourism benchmarks
3. Paid Search CTR of 7.73%, the highest of all tactics
4. Mobile Interstitial CTR of 1.10%, using location-based audience targeting
5. 16,936 trackable visits across 14 destination partner Reference: Kerstin Kansteiner, Executive Director, 4th St. Retro Row. [email protected]; 562.212.5252
CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT AND REOURCES 1.2.6
4th Street Retro Row Business
Improvement District (Long Beach)
Scope: Brand strategy, discovery and stakeholder
research, creative campaign development, identity
system, brand guidelines, ongoing creative production.
Fourth Street is one of the most prominent and highly
trafficked business districts in Long Beach. Commune
was engaged in 2021 to solve a specific branding
problem: a corridor with strong local name recognition
that needed to articulate its distinct position clearly enough for a wider regional audience to discover it.
The work began by listening. Commune gathered
stakeholders across the corridor, including business
owners, board members, residents, and visitors, to
understand each perspective. Across the inputs, the
essence emerged consistently. From the types of
offerings to the spirit of its proprietors, 4th Street was the most proudly independent pocket of Long Beach,
and that independence was the brand.
The campaign that followed, “I am 4,” featured the
people and personalities of the corridor. Neighborhood
landmarks and storefronts became part of the creative
canvas, with the campaign treating the physical street
itself as the medium. The work invited the neighborhood to participate in how it was represented, with the
resulting brand becoming an ever-evolving canvas that
28 4th Street Retro Row Business Improvement District (Long Beach) Scope: Brand strategy, discovery and stakeholder research, creative campaign development, identity system, brand guidelines, ongoing creative production CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT AND REOURCES 1.2.6
29 4th Street Retro Row Business Improvement District (Long Beach) Scope: Brand strategy, discovery and stakeholder research, creative campaign development, identity system, brand guidelines, ongoing creative production CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT AND REOURCES 1.2.6
30 1.2.7
ASSIGNED
PERSONNEL
Commune Communication Response
to City of Santa Clarita RFP for
Advertising Campaign
31 The team below is Commune’s full time senior staff and will be proud to lead the work for this Visit Santa Clarita engagement. The team boasts direct experience with comparable destinations, tourism marketing programs, and is the same team that innovated our proprietary BedHead platform. Each team member’s role, professional background, similar work, time commitment, and responsibilities are described.
Per RFP Section 1.2.7, substitution of the Project Manager or lead personnel will not occur without prior written approval of the City. The Project Lead for the Visit Santa Clarita engagement is Jenn Skelaney, Director of Client Service.
The team operates in-house, with members based across Los Angeles and Orange County. All disciplines are integrated under a single agency structure. No outside subcontractors are required for the core scope of work
ASSIGNED PERSONNEL 1.2.7
TEAM MEMBER ROLE HOURS PER
FISCAL YEAR
Jenn Skelaney Director of Client Service / Project Lead 175 Ryan La Rosa Co-Founder, COO / Project Support 75
James Whale Co-Founder, CEO / Project Support 75
Richardson Reigart Chief Strategy Officer / Lead Strategist 145 Anna Lamson Media Director / Lead Media Planner 195
Jessica Farrell Digital Media Strategist / Media Support 140 Michael Ziman Creative Director / Creative Lead and Copy 160 Aaray Amano Art Director / Creative Support and Design 150 Cheantay Jensen Senior Videogreapher / Content Creator 55 Josh Slone Senior Web Developer / Lead Digital Pro-
duction
50 TOTAL 1,210
ASSIGNED PERSONNEL 1.2.7
32 ROLE EXPERIENCE
Jenn Skelaney,
Director of Client
Service / Project
Lead
Jenn serves as Project Lead for the Visit Santa Clarita engagement. Based in Los Angeles, she has led client service for Commune’s public sector and place-based work, including engagements with Downtown Long Beach Alliance, Downtown San Mateo, City of San Francisco, and Visit Arroyo Grande among others.
For Visit Santa Clarita, she is responsible for day-to-day coordination, communication, and overall project management. She is the primary liaison between Commune and the City, maintaining a clear communication cadence, setting timelines, and ensuring work stays on track. She will be a regular presence at TMD Advisory Board meetings, City Council briefings, production work, and feeder-market activation events. Jenn is the model of reliability and organization.
Time commitment: 175 hours per fiscal year.
Ryan La Rosa, Co-
Founder & Chief
Operating Officer
Ryan provides executive oversight and strategic guidance for the Visit Santa Clarita engagement. He brings more than 20 years of experience leading communications, branding, and marketing efforts for cities and business improvement districts.
His work has focused on helping communities define what makes them distinct and translating that into clear strategic direction. For Visit Santa Clarita, Ryan supports ongoing strategic direction, ensures that research, positioning, and execution remain aligned with the City’s goals, and provides senior-level perspective across the engagement.
Time commitment: 75 hours per fiscal year
James Whale, Co-
Founder & Chief
Executive Officer
James provides executive oversight and creative direction for the Visit Santa Clarita engagement. He brings more than 25 years of experience leading branding and design efforts for cities and business improvement districts.
He supports the creative team in the development of campaign work, ensuring all output is aligned with strategy and reflects a clear, distinct identity for Visit Santa Clarita.
Time commitment: 75 hours per fiscal year.
ASSIGNED PERSONNEL 1.2.7
33 ROLE EXPERIENCE
Richardson Reigart,
Chief Strategy
Officer
Richardson leads strategy and research for the Visit Santa Clarita engagement. Based in Los Angeles, he brings more than 25 years of experience in brand strategy.
At Commune, he has led strategy for Visit Arroyo Grande, the City of Dublin, the City of West Hollywood and many others. For Visit Santa Clarita, he is responsible for audience development, market analysis, and ensuring all campaign decisions are grounded in clear strategic direction. He owns the 4Cs research framework (City, Category, Consumer, Culture) and the integration of the BedHead methodology into ongoing strategic direction.
Time commitment: 145 hours per fiscal year
Time commitment: 145 hours per fiscal year
Michael Ziman,
Creative Director
Michael leads copywriting and supports concept development for the Visit Santa Clarita engagement. He brings more than 15 years of experience developing campaigns for California travel and tourism clients, including Long Beach, Visit Arroyo Grande, the City of West Hollywood and more.
At Commune, he currently leads creative direction and copywriting. For Visit Santa Clarita, he is responsible for shaping messaging and ensuring all creative work reflects a clear, consistent voice rooted in what is specific to the destination.
Time commitment: 195 hours per fiscal year
Aaray Amano, Art
Director
Aaray leads design for the Visit Santa Clarita engagement and supports creative development across all campaign assets. He brings experience leading design efforts for clients including Long Beach T ransit and Long Beach City College.
His work focuses on developing visual systems and ensuring consistency across channels. For Visit Santa Clarita, he is responsible for design direction and production, translating the strategic platform into clear and cohesive creative.
Time commitment: 140 hours per fiscal year.
ASSIGNED PERSONNEL 1.2.7
34 ROLE EXPERIENCE
Anna Lamson,
Media Director
Anna leads media strategy and execution for the Visit Santa Clarita engagement. She brings more than 15 years of experience executing full- funnel advertising strategies and multi-channel campaigns across digital, social, mobile, print, and out-of-home channels. Her career spans roles at leading agencies including Horizon Media and RPA, where she developed expertise in complex budget management and vendor negotiation across major accounts.
At Commune, Anna directs paid media for Downtown Long Beach, Visit Arroyo Grande, Gold Coast T ransit, and T ahoe T ransportation District, connecting media investments directly to city and hotel visits. She specializes in highly targeted, budget-efficient media programs that adapt to evolving client needs, with performance, flexibility, and accountability as her operating principles
Time commitment: 160 hours per fiscal year
Jessica Farrell,
Senior Digital
Media Strategist
Jessica leads digital media strategy for the Visit Santa Clarita engagement.
She brings over 15 years of experience designing and managing cross- platform digital media strategies for tourism, hotel, and civic clients. Her career has included digital media work for tourism clients such as the Wyoming Office of T ourism, Reno T ahoe T ourism, Visit Arroyo Grade, Wisconsin Department of T ourism, the Broadmoor Resort, and more hotel partners,
At Commune, she leads digital media planning, optimization, and measurement and supports digital strategy across multiple destination engagements. She specializes in data integration, audience measurement, and platform optimization, with particular depth on translating analytics into actionable channel decisions. For Visit Santa Clarita, she is responsible for day-to-day execution of digital media campaigns, including programmatic display, CTV, paid search, and the recommended paid social value-add layer. She translates BedHead’s visitation data into channel- level optimization actions on a weekly cadence and manages the platform elationships with Google, Meta, programmatic exchanges, and OT As.
Time commitment: 140 hours per fiscal year
ASSIGNED PERSONNEL 1.2.7
35 ROLE EXPERIENCE
Josh Slone, Senior
Web Developer
Josh leads web development for the Visit Santa Clarita engagement. He specializes in building web solutions that balance technical performance with clear and intuitive user experience. His work focuses on site functionality, performance, and ongoing improvements that support conversion and usability.
For Visit Santa Clarita, Josh supports website maintenance, updates, and enhancements to ensure VisitSantaClarita.com continues to perform as an effective tool for visitor engagement, with particular attention to integrations supporting AIO and trip-planning conversion paths.
Time commitment: 55 hours per fiscal year
Cheantay
Jensen, Senior
Videographer
Cheantay leads photo and video production for the Visit Santa Clarita engagement. She brings more than 10 years of experience in content capture and production across a range of industries.
Her work includes both production and post-production, allowing all content to be developed in-house. For Visit Santa Clarita, Cheantay is responsible for capturing and producing visual assets that align with campaign needs and support ongoing creative development across digital, social, and video channels.
Time commitment: 50 hours per fiscal year
ASSIGNED PERSONNEL 1.2.7
36 Time Allocation by Project Category
The team’s combined production hours per fiscal year are allocated across project categories as follows:
Project Category Hours Per Fiscal Y ear
Planning and Meetings 60
Strategy and Media 320
Creative Development 310
Website Maintenance and AIO 70
Co-Op Partnerships 50
Visitors Guide Production 110
Contingency 290
TOTAL 1120
Planning & Meetings covers monthly City staff meetings, bi-monthly TMD Advisory Board meetings, quarterly planning sessions, and bi-annual City Council briefings. Strategy & Media covers ongoing campaign management, media planning and buying, BedHead measurement and reporting, channel-level optimization, and strategic insights development. Creative Development covers campaign development, social content, paid media assets, blog and e-newsletter development. The Contingency allocation reserves time for production work, content capture, and special initiatives that surface across the engagement year. T otal hours are managed transparently throughout the engagement, with hours tracked and reported alongside budget pacing on a monthly basis per RFP Section 4.1.3.
ASSIGNED PERSONNEL 1.2.7
37 38
Commune will not engage any sub-consultants or subcontractors for the scope of work described in Sections 4.1 and 4.2 of the RFP. All strategy, research, media planning and buying, creative development, content production, project management, performance measurement, and reporting will be performed by Commune’s full time, in-house team.
The in-house model removes added and hidden costs that emerge when work passes between organizations. It eliminates hand-off friction between strategy, creative, and media teams.
Performance data, budget decisions, and creative adjustments all flow through one team without external dependencies.
For the optional services described in Section 5 of the RFP, the following relationships apply:
Section 5.2 Airport Advertising Placement Coordination. If included in the engagement, Commune handles strategy, creative production, vendor selection, and end-to-end coordination of the airport advertising program. We recommend the City contract directly with the airport advertising vendor for inventory hard costs. This structure keeps the $460,000 budget focused on the working scope, mirrors the City’s preferred procurement approach described in Addendum 1, and removes pass-through markup.
Section 5.3 Annual Visitor Guide Development and Printing. If included in the engagement, Commune leads creative design, content writing, layout, and delivery of the print-ready file, along with vendor recommendation and coordination. Per Addendum 1 Q45, the City manages printing and distribution directly, including print vendor selection. This is the procurement structure the City has explicitly stated it prefers, and we are structured to deliver our scope cleanly within it.
Both arrangements keep the cost structure transparent and the working budget unencumbered by pass-through inventory costs. If the City prefers an alternative structure, we are equipped to operate that way. The structure described above is our recommendation, not a limitation on our capability.
SUB-CONSULTANTS 1.2.8
SUB-CONSULTANTS 1.2.8
39 40
This section addresses the firm-level view: relevant background, direct applicability to the Visit Santa Clarita RFP, and reference engagements whose contacts speak to capabilities not previously mentioned in other sections.
Applicability to this RFP
The selection criteria in Section 3.1 of the RFP and the qualities the City named in Addendum 1 map directly to what Commune is built to deliver:
• Destination marketing experience with TMD-funded organizations. Active engagement with the Arroyo Grande T ourism Business Improvement District since 2024, with full- service scope and BedHead measurement against named hotel properties. Comparable engagement with Downtown Long Beach Alliance since 2018, the City of Long Beach, City of West Hollywood, City of Dublin, City of Napa, Tuolumne County, and others. • Measurable results tied to overnight visitation and lodging demand. Verified RevPAR outperformance for Arroyo Grande (12.0% versus San Luis Obispo County’s 3.1% through February 2026, per STR). 12,000+ BedHead-attributed hotel visits delivered for DLBA. 16,900+ for Discover T orrance.
• Credible attribution and performance reporting. BedHead is the firm’s proprietary measurement architecture, integrated into the agency operating model with no third-party platform license required. Detailed in Section 1.2.5.
• Full-breadth scope coverage. Strategy, research, media planning and buying, creative production, content development, website development, social media, project management, and reporting all operate in-house under one team. Detailed in Sections 1.2.7 and 1.2.8. • Cultural fit, responsiveness, transparency in financial management. Direct accessibility commitments to the Project Lead and senior team. Monthly budget reconciliation per RFP Section 4.1.3. Every Visit Arroyo Grande deliverable held on or under budget across the engagement to date.
• Capacity to manage transition. Commune’s operating model is structured to absorb that transition within the 60-90 day window the City named in Q25.
CONTRACTOR CAPABILITY AND
REFERENCES 1.2.9
CONTRACTOR CAPABILITY AND REFERENCES 1.2.9
41 Retention as a firm-level credential
We are proud of our long-term engagements which demonstrate a commitment to long-term success and camaraderie built between Commune and our client teams:
• Arroyo Grande T ourism Business Improvement District. Engaged 2024, Retained Contract in 2026 for three year term
• Downtown Long Beach Alliance. Engaged 2018, now in the seventh year of partnership. • Long Beach T ransit. Engaged 2018, now in seventh year of partnership, re-awarded through a competitive 2025 RFP process.
• Discover T orrance. Engaged 2021, in fourth year.
• Visit T uolumne County. Engaged 2022, in third year.
Reference 1: APLA Health/AIDS Walk Los Angeles
Engagement: Brand strategy, visual identity, stakeholder engagement, campaign development, and media planning. Engaged in 2017, now in its eighth year of partnership. The scope covers APLA Health’s multi-program operations (healthcare clinics, food pantries, fundraising events including AIDS Walk Los Angeles) under a unified, modular brand architecture Commune built and continues to steward.
What this reference speaks to about Commune: Multi-program brand architecture that scales across audiences and service categories. Stakeholder-driven discovery methodology, including multilingual community research and listening sessions across diverse audience segments.
Reference contact: Craig Bowers, [email protected]; 323.691.8944; Chief Marketing & External Affairs Officer
CONTRACTOR CAPABILITY AND REFERENCES 1.2.9
42 43
Reference 2: Long Beach T ransit
Engagement: Multi-year creative campaign development and rider communications, with ongoing creative production across print, web, and environmental formats. Engaged 2018, now in seventh year. Re-awarded through competitive 2025 RFP process.
What this reference speaks to about Commune:Public-sector procurement compliance. Operational throughput at municipal scale (249+ creative deliverables per year, 1.2-day average turnaround on requests). The long-cycle credibility that survives re-procurement.
Reference contact: Michael Gold, Executive Director / Vice President, Customer Relations and Communications, Long Beach T ransit. [email protected]. 562.599.8533.
44 Reference 3: Council of Business Associations
Engagement: Commune has represented the Los Angeles area Council of Business Associations since 2017, helping with distinct Business Improvement District marketing and design requirements for a variety of distinct cities throughout the county.
What this reference speaks to about Commune: Vast experience defining specific cities by their unique selling point while also understanding the unique needs and nuances of city boards, TBIDS, and stakeholder groups.
Reference contact: Blair Cohn, Executive Director, [email protected]. 562.307.4178.
CONTRACTOR CAPABILITY AND REFERENCES 1.2.9
45 Per the RFP, this section is open for any information that may assist in proposal evaluation so we’ve decided to focus on three recommended additions that could supplement our approach.
Recommendation 1: Visitor Guide Modernization
Three signals in Addendum 1 point to the City being open to a format change by elevating the look, feel, and editorial cohesion of the guide. In addition to these updates, we recommend a hybrid model with a digital-first orientation.
A premium small-batch print run, sized at 2,000 to 3,000 guides, is reserved for high-value placements. Think TMD hotel lobbies, IPW activations, Visit California co-op events, premium feeder-market trade activations, and concierge desks at LA-area hotels supporting cross-market referral. The reduced volume creates space for higher-quality outputs and more sophisticated production that physically signals the brand evolution.
The digital guide becomes the primary source for distribution. It is built mobile-first, structured for AI-search platform discovery (per the AIO framework described in Recommendation 2 below), and integrated with OT A partner environments where in-market planners are already searching.
Content is editorially aligned with the broader annual advertising campaign to provide a more unified brand experience across visitor-facing materials.
Recommendation 2: AIO Baseline Visibility Study
The City has confirmed that AIO is in the early exploratory stage which is timely as we recommend beginning the engagement with a one-time pre-campaign AIO baseline visibility scan for VisitSantaClarita.com.
The scan establishes the program’s starting position across AI-generated answer platforms (ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, Perplexity, and others), mapped against high-value trip- planning queries: “best things to do in Santa Clarita,” “where to stay in Santa Clarita,” “day trips from LA,” “weekend getaways from Bay Area,” “outdoor adventures near Los Angeles,” and similar surfaces.
The output becomes a measured baseline including things like current citation rate, accuracy of representation, and current ranking against competitive destinations. The baseline includes a proposed KPI framework for ongoing AIO measurement, addressing the methodology gap the City flagged as an issue. The baseline becomes the benchmark against which subsequent AIO optimization is measured. Without it, AIO work is descriptive at best. With it, the AIO program produces year-over-year visibility lift that tracks alongside BedHead-attributed visitation outcome ADDITIONAL DATA 1.2.10
ADDITIONAL DATA 1.2.10
46 Recommendation 3: Logomark Development Assessment
Per Q29, the City has explicitly opened the door to logomark development if the selected agency can make a compelling case for how it would strengthen destination recognition while honoring the existing color palette. We recommend not proposing a specific logomark direction as part of this submission. Instead, we recommend that a structured branding as- sessment be built into the brand evolution work during the first 60-90 days post-award.
The assessment would cover three areas.
• Visual recognition study. T esting the current wordmark’s standalone recall, versatility across formats (digital, OOH, video, environmental), and identity behavior at small sizes and in social-media-native applications.
• Format-versatility audit. Reviewing the existing brand applications across the channels the campaign will deploy (CTV, programmatic, paid social, OOH, Visitor Guide, website) to identify formats where a wordmark alone struggles.
• Branding recommendation. If the assessment supports development, Commune’s creative team would develop branding concepts that supplement all other marketing activities, delivering an updated branding system that respects existing elements while building a new system sure to stand the test of time.
The structure means the City retains full control over whether a logomark is developed at all. Commune’s commitment in this recommendation is to assess the question rigorously, not to force a direction.
ADDITIONAL DATA 1.2.10
47 This project represents the City of Santa Clarita putting its reputation and success in the hands of an outside entity. Whoever wins this contract represents the City and its ten hotels every day.
We fully understand the risk and opportunity you feel in making this choice.
Throughout this response we have done our best to lay out the case for why Commune is the ideal choice for this project. We feel strongly about each of those proof points. However, perhaps the strongest reason to choose Commune is one that’s harder to measure. In short:
Y ou will not just be another logo on our website grid. Y ou will be a partner that we uncommonly dedicate ourselves to and welcome into our family. And that is ultimately why we think we’re the best choice. No one will care as much as Commune.
A CLOSING NOTE
• If property-level attribution that connects
every advertising dollar to a verified hotel
visit matters ...
• If creative built specifically for Santa Clarita,
the kind that would not work for any other
Southern California destination, matters...
• If a fully integrated agency partnership, with
strategy, creative, media, measurement, and
reporting under one roof and managed by
one team, matters...
• If a partner that brings new ideas
proactively, holds budgets transparently, and
shows up to every TMD board meeting as if it
is the most important meeting of the month
matters ...
• And most importantly, if you want a firm that
will care as much as you do about the success
of your city and your team...
CHOOSE
City of Santa Clarita - Cost File Best and Final Offer
Statement of Offer
Commune Communication Corp. submits the following Best and Final Offer in response
to
Proposal
#ED-25-26-38,
Advertising
Campaign
for
the
City
of
Santa
Clarita.
This proposal is a firm offer for 120 calendar days from the proposal closing date (May
18,
2026).
The
total
contract
amount
under
this
proposal
shall
not
exceed
$438,000
annually,
all-inclusive
of
agency
fees,
media
commission,
working
media
spend,
and
all
optional
Section
5 services
described
herein.
No
additional
compensation
will
be
paid
beyond
the
agreed
contract
amount.
Cost figures below reflect annual cost across a single fiscal year. Annual renewal pricing
for
years
2,
3,
and
4 (per
RFP
Section
13)
will
be
aligned
with
the
Consumer
Price
Index
for
the
Los
Angeles–Riverside–Orange
County
area
or
as
otherwise
negotiated.
Total Annual Contract Maximum (Not-to-Exceed) - $438,000 Annual Cost Breakdown Core Scope — Items 4.1 (Marketing Strategy & Management) and 4.2 (Media Planning
&
Placement)
Component Annual Cost Monthly Equivalent
Agency Fee $105,000 $8,750
Working Media Budget (net to publishers)
$238,000 Variable per flight
Media Commission (10% of gross media buy)
$26,000 Variable per flight
Subtotal (Core Scope) $369,000
Agency Fee covers strategy and research, audience segmentation, creative development
(concept,
design,
copywriting,
production),
media
planning
and
buying,
BedHead
set
up,
project
management,
account
management,
performance
optimization,
and
monthly
performance
reports
per
RFP
Section
4.1. City of Santa Clarita - Cost File Best and Final Offer Working Media Budget is allocated across the recommended channel mix (Connected
TV,
programmatic
display,
travel
publishers
and
OTAs,
paid
search,
paid
social
as
a
recommended
value-add
addition,
audio
and
podcast,
out-of-home)
per
the
media
strategy
in
Section
1.2.5. Final
allocation
by
channel
is
developed
collaboratively
with
City
staff
post-award.
Media Commission compensates Commune for vendor negotiation, campaign trafficking,
optimization,
and
BedHead
integration
and
reporting
across
all
paid
channels.
Agency Commission Structure (Section 1.3.1.2): 10% of gross media buy per the final
agreed
contract
terms,
applied
uniformly
across
digital,
social,
search,
audio,
OOH,
and
traditional
placements.
No
incremental
margin
on
programmatic
or
trading-desk
pass-through.
Optional Section 5 Services — Separate Pricing per RFP Section 1.3.1.3 Service Annual Cost Monthly Equivalent
Search Engine Marketing — ongoing optimization, PPC management (Section 5.1) $12,000 $1,000
Artificial Intelligence Optimization — ongoing monthly service (Section 5.1.3) $18,000 $1,500
AIO Baseline Visibility Study — one-time, pre-campaign $7,000 One-Time
Visitor Guide Development — agency scope (Section 5.3) $15,000 Project-Based
Subtotal $52,000
Notes on Section 5 pricing structure:
● Visitor Guide Development pricing reflects agency scope only (creative design,
content
writing,
layout,
delivery
of
print-ready
file
plus
the
digital
guide).
Per
Addendum
1 Q2
and
Q45,
production
and
fulfillment
costs
are
not
a
mandatory
agency
expense
and
are
managed
by
the
City
City of Santa Clarita - Cost File Best and Final Offer directly through their selected print vendor. ● AIO Ongoing covers continuous monthly optimization, performance monitoring,
content
recommendations,
and
reporting
per
Addendum
1 Q35's
requirement
for
ongoing
monthly
service.
● AIO Baseline Visibility Study is a one-time pre-campaign investment to establish
the
program's
starting
position
across
AI-generated
answer
platforms,
billed
in
the
engagement's
first
60 days.
Detailed
in
Section
1.2.10. Contingency Reserve
Component Annual Cost
Production, content capture, ad-hoc creative requests $17,000 Subtotal $17,000
Contingency Reserve. Reserved time and production budget for opportunities and
needs
that
surface
during
the
engagement
year,
including
additional
creative
production,
content
capture,
mid-cycle
campaign
adjustments,
and
ad-hoc
activations
identified
collaboratively
with
City
staff.
Drawn
down
only
as
engaged.
Cost Structure Notes
Attribution infrastructure cost: Per Addendum 1 Q4, the selected agency is expected
to
procure
attribution
tools
within
the
contract
maximum.
Commune's
BedHead
platform
is
integrated
into
the
agency
operating
model
with
no
separate
third-party
platform
license
cost
(Zartico,
Arrivalist,
Datafy,
Adara,
or
comparable).
The
full
budget
is
available
to
apply
against
working
media,
creative,
and
content.
Pass-through costs not included: Per Addendum 1 (Q1, Q2, Q45), airport media inventory
hard
costs
and
Visitor
Guide
print/fulfillment
are
outside
the
agency
scope
and
contracted
directly
by
the
City.
These
costs
do
not
flow
through
this
Cost
File.
Year 2, 3 and 4 renewal pricing: Per RFP Section 13, the contract may be renewed
City of Santa Clarita - Cost File Best and Final Offer annually for up to three additional years. Renewal pricing will be adjusted by the Consumer
Price
Index
for
the
Los
Angeles–Riverside–Orange
County
area
or
as
negotiated,
with
the
structure
above
as
the
baseline.
Hourly Rate Schedule - Section 1.3.1.4
For services requested outside the defined scope of this proposal, the following hourly
rates
apply.
All
rates
are
fully
burdened
and
billed
per
hour.
Role / Discipline Hourly Rate Executive & Strategy Services Chief Executive Officer / Executive Creative Director $200/hr Chief Operating Officer / EVP, Strategy $200/hr Strategy Director $200/hr Senior Brand Strategist $200/hr Director of Public Relations $200/hr Creative Development Services Creative Director $200/hr Art Director $200/hr Senior Graphic Designer $200/hr Junior Designer $150/hr Lead Copywriter $200/hr Spanish Copywriter $200/hr Digital & Web Services Director of Interactive / Senior Web Developer $200/hr Junior Web Developer $150/hr UX/UI + Motion Designer $200/hr Accessibility Specialist (WCAG 2.1 AA) $200/hr
City of Santa Clarita - Cost File Best and Final Offer SEO Strategist $200/hr Social Media Manager $150/hr Media Services Media Director / SVP, Media Planning $200/hr Digital Media Strategist $200/hr Photography & Production Services Executive Producer / Director $150/hr Senior Producer $150/hr Director of Photography / Photographer $150/hr Video Editor $150/hr Motion Graphics Designer $150/hr Account & Project Management Services Account Manager $150/hr Project Manager $150/hr
Authorized Signature
This firm offer is submitted on behalf of Commune Communication Corp. by an authorized
representative
below.
City of Santa Clarita - Cost File Best and Final Offer Signature: __ ___________________________________
Printed Name: Ryan La Rosa
Title: Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer
Date: __6/5/26____