← WORK

Lower Georgia Avenue Holiday Lights

Designing a month-long event to drive visibility and foot traffic to a commercial corridor.

CLIENT   District Bridges

Businesses along Lower Georgia Avenue Main Street are often overlooked during the holiday season, with residents opting to shop online and at national chains for holiday gifts and meals.

The holidays are an important economic time for businesses, and Lower Georgia Avenue Main Street is home to dozens of businesses that rely on foot traffic to generate sales.

Develop, implement, and promote a month-long Holiday Lights event to drive foot traffic and sales to the corridor, bolstering community support of small and local businesses.

Megan Flynn Marketing (MFM) developed a comprehensive event strategy, outlining a plan for business recruitment and participation, sponsorship recruitment, and contest logistics, as well as a marketing strategy and timeline.

To create a cohesive, eye-catching look and feel for the month-long event, Megan Flynn Marketing developed branding for Lower Georgia Avenue Main Street Holiday Lights. This included the name, logo, color scheme, fonts, and artwork assets. MFM led the copywriting and design of all digital and print materials for the event, including posters, a business recruitment 1-pager, and a toolkit for participating businesses.

Megan Flynn Marketing then designed and launched the Holiday Lights website, which included a business directory and interactive event calendar to promote the holiday events and specials held by local businesses.

To help encourage residents and visitors to visit businesses unfamiliar to them, MFM developed a BINGO card. To enter to win one of 16 prizes available from local businesses, residents visited the businesses listed during the month of December.

Additionally, LGAMS Holiday Lights included a friendly competition between businesses, awarding the best decorated businesses as determined by a panel of community judges. To further involve the community, the public could also cast their vote for a People’s Choice Winner. 

MFM developed media pitches for local newspapers, blogs, TV stations, and radio stations with the goal of publicizing the month-long event. The Award Ceremony announcing the best displays provided a second opportunity to generate renewed media coverage mid-way through the month.    

Holiday Lights dazzled residents and visitors, positioning LGAMS local businesses as attractive alternatives to online commerce, food delivery services, and suburban malls.

With 60 businesses participating in Lower Georgia Avenue Main Street Holiday Lights, the corridor sparkled and dazzled visitors.

Paid ads and targeted media outreach captured the attention of over 19,800 unique individuals on Facebook alone, and Holiday Lights was featured in 13 earned media stories in 9 media outlets, including NBC4, DCist, Washingtonian, and PoPville.

Businesses displayed their enthusiasm for participating in Holiday Lights by developing their own social media images and videos, encouraging their customers to check out their holiday light displays, vote for them for the People’s Choice Award, and participate in Holiday Lights BINGO.