caption freeform

Digital Performance Marketing Campaign

Project Overview:

The City of Highland Park, Illinois, seeks qualifications and quotes from social media marketing agencies with expertise in campaign development and driving increased online engagement to develop a marketing campaign designed to brand Highland Park's restaurants and businesses as a regional destination. This initiative will run from July through December 2021, with production beginning June. The City anticipates building on this short-term campaign for a multi-year marketing initiative extending beyond the impacts of the pandemic, so it is important that the content is not pandemic-related. 

The campaign objective is to attract visitors from outside Highland Park to shop and dine in the City. The marketing agency will be tasked with producing campaign core creative (video, digital, and social media assets), to launch the campaign on various social media platforms and managing the related social media campaign. While the City welcomes a fresh and creative look for the campaign, the creative must align with the City’s existing brand standards, which can be provided upon request, including primary and secondary logos and brand uses, brand colors and typefaces, and templates for print collateral. At this time, the City is not prepared to embark on a broader rebranding initiative, so the focus for this project is deliberately narrow and limited to the City’s business development objectives.

Applicants should have the capacity to produce a video focused on Highland Park as a regional dining and shopping destination and execute a social media campaign to accompany its launch, alongside existing City communications that will be managed by City staff. 

In addition, the City would like a library of photographic assets derived from the video that align visually with the overall campaign to be used in this and future marketing endeavors. 

To support the video launch and social media campaign, City staff will manage traditional media and develop and launch an accompanying website.

Primary Objectives:

  • Lay the foundation for a multi-year City marketing campaign, to be initiated July 2021, with limited, planned content updates in FY 2022. Due to the City’s annual budget cycle, City staff will not be able to provide the agency with final budget information for FY 2022 until the fourth quarter. The City estimates allocating approximately $10,000 of its marketing and advertising budget to refresh creative in FY 2022.
  • Promote Highland Park as a regional post-pandemic shopping & dining destination (Chicago, North Shore, northwest suburbs, southern Wisconsin)
  • Increase regional awareness of Highland Park businesses and restaurants, with a focus on broadening reach beyond Highland Park residents
  • Launch the City's social media presence on Instagram and increase overall social media engagement (the City’s primary social media platform is Facebook)
  • Produce branded advertorial content that the City can reuse beyond the scope of the campaign to continue to promote the City

Secondary Objectives:

  • Promote Highland Park to prospective businesses and developers
  • Create a video marketing library and update stock photography 

Scope:

  • Develop campaign concepts in collaboration with the City
  • Produce core creative:
  • Core video (approx. 5 minutes or less) promoting tourism to the City & Highland Park businesses in general, which can be reused and "remixed" by the City as needed for future social media or web-based content
  • Short video library for use on social media based on content from the core video
  • Digital artwork, including social media images for posts and stories as determined by the agency. The City also maintains digital kiosks in its downtown business district, which could run digital slides as part of the campaign.
  • Digital media marketing campaign:
  • Coordinate Instagram-driven campaign with cross-promotion via Facebook, including identifying and leveraging influencers in relevant Facebook groups
  • Evaluate and recommend additional social media networks for use during the campaign, if required. Please note that the City does not currently maintain an active social media presence on networks apart from Facebook and Twitter. YouTube is used in a limited capacity. At this time, the City anticipates that its focus will be on Facebook and Instagram.

Budget: $29,000

Evaluation & Metrics:

In coordination with the agency, the City will identify key marketing metrics to evaluate the campaign's and the marketing agency's success. The City will also work with business owners to obtain information about performance relative to prior years. 

Posted: Thursday, April 22, 2021

Updated: Friday, April 23, 2021

Submittal & Questions: cityhp@cityhpil.com.

Submittal Deadline: 5:00 PM, Friday, May 7, 2021 

Contents of Submittal:

  • Agency background and qualifications
  • Quote for work as described herein
  • Three samples of relevant work 
  • Three references


Addendum A: Questions & Answers (April 30, 2021)
Addendum B: Additional Questions & Answers (May 5, 2021)