Objectives

One year into Covid and local Surrey businesses were feeling the impact of health restrictions and reduced customer traffic. The message that was typically used to prompt people to “buy local” was getting tired and there was a sense that many were starting to “tune out”. Help was needed, something that would resonate with local consumers. In short, we wanted to tell people to support local…without actually saying it. So instead of repeating tired, worn-out messaging, we decided to focus on two positive message approaches:

• Show Gratitude – Depict the heartfelt impact that was made in the lives of Surrey business owners by people who shopped local during Covid. The emotional resonance would also inspire the community to keep the momentum going.
• Social Community Impact – By using the current social and economic status as a benchmark, we would provide useful information that would show how Surrey Board Of Trade members’ services and/or products could help alleviate the stress and boredom of Surrey residents.

Strategy and Execution

#ThankYouSurrey was the overarching message that would serve as a touchpoint for the campaign tactics.
Real Stories  Real Businesses  Real People
A community coming together in trying times.

A social media campaign was rolled out, humanizing the people behind the Surrey business community. The premise of the campaign was to provide a platform for local businesses to share the stress, uncertainty and struggles they had endured over the past year yet still convey their gratitude to the members of the larger community who shopped local and showed their support. This would, indirectly, demonstrate the positive impact and sense of goodwill that people can generate when they do shop local.

Seven Surrey Board Of Trade members who had been positively impacted by the community’s efforts to shop local were profiled. Each member was profiled in a high-production hero video, which also “doubled” as an ad to get people to follow the Surrey Board Of Trade Instagram account to hear more stories.

Six local business would each have one week of three consecutive posts dedicated to them.

• One video post
• One family image post
• One product/service post

An email blast was sent out to all Surrey Board Of Trade members asking for story submissions.

Further to this, a portion of the budget was used to provide incentive in two ways:

• For Surrey Board Of Trade members – a monetary reward was received if they were one of the six people chosen.
• For the community – a giveaway of locally curated products to increase follows and shares of their favourite story.

Throughout all of this was the sub-messaging that indicated “the fight wasn’t over yet” and that Surrey businesses still needed the continuing support of the community, urging them to “shop local”.

Results

KPIs measured: video views, likes/follows/shares, landing page visits

OVERALL CAMPAIGN RESULTS

Ad Spend - $7,499
Impressions – 1,593,041
Reach – 397,730
Link Clicks – 2,256
Engagement – 252,541
Post Reactions – 2,209
Post Shares – 147
Video Plays – 1,302,560

The Surrey Board Of Trade was impressed with the results they achieved with this campaign; so much so that they approached Blue Meta one year later, asking for our help to strategize and implement on an updated version of the campaign, aptly titled #SurreyStrong.

Media