City Council to Discuss $391k Media Ad Buy to Promote Antioch

On Tuesday, the Antioch City Council will be formally asked to spend $391,200 on media placement and marketing materials to help continue to rebrand Antioch and improve messaging.

UPDATE – here is the council recap of the actual discussion – click here.

The move comes less than a year after the City hired Evviva Brands for $95k to assist the city with its branding efforts and two weeks after both Evviva and Orange22 presented to the city council what a media purchase would entail.

On Tuesday, the city council will vote to work with Orange22 to create a media budget strategy and plan of up to $391,000—this includes media purchases of $340,200, a ten percent fee for Orange of $34,000 and a five percent contingency of $17,000 for maximum outreach.  The city is also being provided a “Option 2” plan which is a $236,000 cost.

Under the proposal, Orange22 would advise staff on when and how to purchase media placement and those purchases can be executed by staff or an outside agent.

During the Nov. 27, 2018 meeting, Evviva and Orange22 presented the city with framework that included a media mix of print, digital (such as social media), radio that would highlight how “opportunity lives here” a concept developed by Evviva to re-brand the City of Antioch.

During the Nov. 27 meeting, Councilman Tony Tiscareno stated he would like to know the immediate benefits of this plan but stated they are trying to do the right thing in promoting and branding the city.

“I want to make sure that the monies we are spending does have a return value,” stated Tiscareno.

Ann Balboa, Orange22, explained how under the plan half of the budget is going to be used for “extremely trackable” ad buys through programmatic – which includes how much time they are spending. The bigger media would be harder to track.

David Kippen, Evviva, explained how the Bay Area is one of the most expensive markets to purchase ad space and a lot of the spending is in market places they are trying to penetrate.

“We can message in Antioch for Antioch very inexpensively because Antioch is not an expensive market, but that is not where we want to change perception, the challenge is moving down the BART corridor into some of the target areas that are now connected to Antioch.”

Kippen explained the City needed to think of the value a new business coming to Antioch would provide and what would happen. He also proposed they could try for six-months and they could track it with such as landing pages.

“Once the ads are out there, it becomes possible to track the kinds of activities they drive,” said Kippen. “From a non-business standpoint, its really what is the reputation value.”

Councilwoman Lori Ogorchock stated that if the council wanted to move forward with this idea, she wanted to do it at a higher-level cost than a lower level cost.

“I want to do it right the first time, I don’t want to do a shoddy job,” stated Ogorchock. “It sounds like a lot of money, but we have to look at the return.”

Councilwoman Monica Wilson stated there were aspects in each of the options that may or may not work but noted that there was some sticker shock with the proposal.

“I would even like to see us getting our name outside of the state of California, there are companies in the mid-west that probably only know San Francisco, Los Angeles and maybe Sacramento,” stated Wilson. “They might go hey there is Antioch, they are right on the water and we needed this.”

Mayor Sean Wright explained when hey hired their new economic development director (Kwame Reed) that part of that was providing a budget for him to work with and a branding company to change the story and message.

“Now the question is how much are we willing to invest to get that message out there. To get all of this and create this message and not to share it doesn’t do us a whole lot of good in creating a new message,” stated Wright. “The pause you hear from the council is we think of it in the realm of how many police officers can we buy with that. We are short with police officers and so that is how we look at all of this.”

Wright highlighted when they spend $200k for six-months, that is about 2-police officers.

“From a community standpoint, we have to understand that bringing those business and getting that message out there and getting up those home values, ultimately creating those jobs so the community can work here… how much is that worth” stated Wright. “Best Buy moving to Antioch, that is about a half-million a year in sales tax money. How much is that worth and how many of those businesses come here before this pays for itself from an advertising standpoint. In any business, if you don’t advertise you die. As a city, how do we look at it from that standpoint.”

Currently, the city also has two other media contracts in the works after a recent Request for Qualifications for photography and video services closed on November 13 and they also have an RFP out for someone to run a community website and provide social media services. These costs are not yet included in the City Budget.

Last year, City manager Ron Bernal hired a media company to create an AntiochOnTheMove website as well as produce videos promoting the city in positive light — attempts to get those figures have been unsuccessful.

For the agenda item and associated documents, click here.