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DelAmoToday.com
The Challenge Winning Strategies was tasked with restoring the community reputation of the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, Calif. after a series of expansion-related issues that engendered unfavorable local reaction among Torrance residents, opinion leaders and elected and appointed officials. The situation threatened the current $300 million mall revitalization. The Mills Corp.’s acquisition of the mall in 2003, and its plans, suffered from prior ownership’s legacy of poor community trust and distant local relationships. Assessments made in cooperation with local public relations counsel determined the need to “re-connect” the Torrance community with the mall, as the future identity and nature of Torrance was dependent on a revitalization of Del Amo Fashion Center. Winning Strategies Approach: Community Outreach through the web The principal approach Winning Strategies proposed was to reach residents and thought-leaders directly, bypassing conventional media and political outreach activities. The medium selected to “re-connect” the mall and the community was an online initiative called “Del Amo Today,” presenting a compelling vision of the future of the Del Amo Fashion Center. In addition to the primary purpose of the Web site- to persuade visitors of the importance of making improvements at the Fashion Center, an important secondary role was as an information gathering and opinion research tool. In this role, the Web site was able to elicit input from visitors about the future of the community and the future of the Fashion Center. Both the qualitative and quantitative character of the responses would be compiled and analyzed for future use. The Web site, DelAmoToday.com, featured regular updates, with a rolling list of new tenants and construction progress through a chronological presentation of construction photos. In addition, the Site highlighted many great community assets, including an events calendar. Creating traffic on the Web site was critical to the success of the campaign. To this end, several mechanisms, like building e-mail address lists from target audiences (employees, business leaders, political elites and others), direct mailings to Torrance residents, and print and online advertising, were put into action. These advertising campaigns played complementary roles in that, while directly driving visitors to the site, they also presented the vision of the future of Del Amo Fashion Center to the community as a whole. Lastly, e-news communication was used as an effective outbound tool for driving visitors to the site. Crafted and distributed by Winning Strategies, these e-newsletters typically included any new updates at DAFC, including new tenants and construction progress, as well as any relevant and related community happenings. Result Although an ongoing project, the web site has succeeded in bridging a communication gap with the community and enforcing Mill’s commitment to the communities they build in. To date, the web site- specifically targeted to Torrance and surrounding areas- has had over 1 million hits and brought in nearly 60,000 visitors. One of the missions of the Web site, to put Mills as front and center as part of the community, can be seen as a success by looking at where visitors would go when visiting the site. Besides the home page, the two most popular sections were the “Community Calendar” and “What’s New” at Del Amo sections. This result shows that visitors would utilize the site as a community resource (through the calendar) while they were also interested in the latest news and updates regarding the revitalization of Del Amo Fashion Center. The “What’s New” section contained information pertaining to new tenants, as well as a link to construction progress, updated and catalogued in a dynamic photo slideshow every few months. E-news communication was a particularly successful part of the Web site campaign, as a cost-effective way to reach citizens and key constituencies directly with unfiltered news and information that the Mills wanted the people of Torrance to know about the DAFC and Torrance. The recipient list grew to nearly 6,000 e-mail addresses. The level of interest and the effectiveness of this outbound communication was apparent in the responses we received after their distribution. The latest e-news- sent in July, 2006- had 3,200 total views and as much response as ever In addition, the Web site was an Official Honoree for the 10th Annual Webby Awards.
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