PR Helps Chinatown Bounce Back from 9/11 with a Brilliant Destination-marketing Campaign Drawing Billions of Eyes and Millions of Visitors

Chinatown in New York City is the largest Chinatown in the U.S., and it's one of Manhattan's oldest neighborhoods. The two-square-mile area boasts more than 100,000 residents and hundreds of restaurants offering culinary samples, styles and tastes from all of China's provinces. Asian art, antiques, jewelry and fashions fill authentic Hong Kong-style malls and shops, and each year hundreds of cultural events, festivals and celebrations ring out in Chinatown's buildings and streets. But you wouldn't have known any of that shortly after 9/11, when the area was devastated and tourist information was non-existent. Business revenues in Chinatown fell 60 to 100 percent after 9/11, mostly from lack of visitors, and there were no programs in place dedicated to bouncing back from this economic crisis. In fact, Chinatown wasn't even on the map. "It wasn't cited on NYC & Company's website map of Manhattan," explains Virginia Sheridan, president of New York-based PR firm M. Silver Associates. "There were no promotional materials, and non-residents had ceased to visit the area even for a meal."

The challenge: Put Chinatown back on the map. Because of Chinatown's proximity to Ground Zero, many subway stops were closed, making it a difficult destination to reach. And while tourists flocked to the site of Ground Zero, no one wanted to stay downtown for long. People stopped going to Chinatown. Then, in 2003, the September 11th Fund and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, two organizations dedicated to helping 9/11 victims, stepped up to turn Chinatown around and reinvigorate business growth. They brought in M. Silver Associates to develop a marketing communications and promotions plan.

The strategy: A destination-marketing approach highlighting Chinatown's easy access and unique experiences. "Our overall strategy was tomake Chinatown a tourism destination rather than a place on a map," says Sheridan, who led the campaign."We applied the principles of destination marketing and said, ‘If this problem didn't exist, what would we do to promote it as a tourism destination?'" Sheridan knew that despite recent setbacks, there were many factors working in Chinatown's favor: "It's a compact area and it's easy for visitors to get around," she says. "A great tourism destination like Chinatown is colorful, interesting and provides people with something different and memorable to do," she says. "It's easy to get to and makes you feel like you've done something special and had a distinctive experience." All M. Silver had to do was get the word out and get people talking about it. The campaign became known as "Explore Chinatown," and M. Silver began putting everything together to ensure that people would do exactly that. "We developed collateral," Sheridan says. "We built Chinatown's first ever tourism website and put together maps, brochures, photo libraries and a press kit." These things had never existed, Sheridan adds. "There was nothing in existence to promote Chinatown — which was a big surprise," she says. With no information or photographs available — even the Museum of the Chinese in the Americas was closed and M. Silver had no access to its archives — Sheridan and her team began researching everything. "We had a lot people working on the ground," she says. "We recruited Chinese speakers who could do research and secure background info and history. Then, we created fact sheets, listings of events, round-up press releases and a full press package."

Roadblocks to success: Getting buy-in from local leaders. The next step was to build on the success of working with local Chinese speakers and create a structured business community. "Chinatown had some loosely aligned groups that represented the business community, but they weren't as formal as a chamber or convention bureau," Sheridan says. "We encouraged and helped them to get better organized and invite more people to participate." They established an Advisory Committee, made up of Chinatown leaders in various sectors, and held m onthly meetings to communicate initiatives, successes, coverage and opportunities. But while working with the local community was a brilliant strategic move, there were potential problems that needed to be addressed. "We had to let everybody know that the program would benefit them," Sheridan says. "There were organizations battling for the same turf and funding, and some leaders felt that there were better ways to spend the money than PR, marketing and advertising. We had to communicate the benefits of what we were doing." The solution: Collaboration. "We gave local business leaders a forum," she says. "We were very transparent with what we were doing — and we let them advise us on what they knew would be beneficial. This helped them to see how marketing would benefit everyone." With the local community behind them, M. Silver began reaching out to national media outlets to convince people around the world to visit Chinatown. "We did a combination of outreach to our travel contacts as well as new outreach to writers and editors that weren't familiar with us," Sheridan says. "We organized group press tours of six to eight writers who could experience Chinatown firsthand, and we did a lot of proactive pitching on certain subject matter. This allowed us to bring in media from all over the U.S., and we could give them a taste of Chinatown."

It worked: "The media really wanted to have a sense of the deeper aspects of Chinatown — what's there beyond the dining? What are the museums and personalities behind it? Who are the people who have added to the charm and personalities? Who are the leaders?" The results:Overwhelming worldwide media coverage — and incredible foot traffic throughout Chinatown. Coverage in national, international and local media initially reached an audience of over 500 million, with key hits including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, "The Oprah Winfrey Show," "Good Day New York," "CBS Morning News" and more. Visitors to Chinatown increased dramatically, with restaurants, shops and attractions reporting pre-9/11 traffic. The program worked so well, in fact, that organizers extended funding for at least another year. And Mayor Bloomberg spoke of "encouraging reports of Chinatown's recovery." "The funding organizations were amazed and pleased," Sheridan says. "Many of the major events like Chinese New Year celebrations doubled, and no one wants it to stop. We had no idea we could achieve these kind of results."

Secrets for success: Read on as Sheridan offers more tips and explains why this campaign won Silver in Travel, Hospitality & Destinations at the 2006 Bulldog Awards for Excellence in Media Relations & Publicity:

1. Add color to your destination by getting local people involved in the campaign. "In a diverse community without any previous experience in joint endeavors, it is important to build consensus, support and local involvement," she says. "In this case, we took a lot of the loose business structures and made them more formal. We also worked with the local organizations behind the traditional events like Lunar New Year and Chinese New Year. We helped them revive these events, and worked with them and others at the destination to create a taste of Chinatown."

2.Leverage new media opportunities to drive better results for your media relations outreach. "With a limited budget and duration for a campaign, invest campaign funds in an informative and user-friendly website rather than printed collateral," she suggests. Additionally: "Utilize more campaign budget for media relations rather than advertising, since results will be more substantial, wider reaching, more frequent and more targeted. An aggressive media relations campaign with publication- and journalist- specific story angles can yield notable success."

3. Use the success of your campaign to create future interest and sponsorship opportunities. "When you know that a campaign has a limited duration, focus part of campaign efforts on generating sponsorship or a successor entity to continue campaign endeavors and success in the future," she says. "In this campaign, we were able to extend funding for another year because we were so successful. We generated early results, and that gave everyone confidence when they started seeing the campaign on TV and in national magazines."

WINNER'S PROFILE: “We are very pleased with the outcome and success of the Explore Chinatown campaign,” Sheridan says. “It is a rewarding experience to take a concept and turn it into a valid business proposition that has helped thousands of people and businesses get on with their lives following a disaster of unimaginable magnitude. We feel good about that as New Yorkers and PR professionals.” Sheridan acknowledges the following people for their help with the campaign: Amy Stursberg, September 11th Fund; John K. Leo, Community Affairs Liaison, Chinatown Lower Manhattan Development Corporation; Wellington Chen, Executive Director, Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation; David Eng , Director of Marketing and Development, Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation; Amy Chin, Program Consultant, Chinatown Partnership Local Development Corporation; Gino Colangelo, Senior Vice President, Dentsu Communications; Telly Wong, Dentsu Comunications; Chrystine Nicholas, President and CEO, NYC & Company; Richard Kerekes, Program Director, Explore Chinatown, NYC & Company; Eric Friedman, Soury Communications; Bonnie Wong, President, Asian Women in Business; Linda Ayares, Senior Vice President, M. Silver Associates; Gina Iovino, Account Supervisor, M. Silver Associates; Aik Wye Ng, Senior Account Executive, M. Silver Associates; Patrick Kwan, Account Executive, M. Silver Associates.

By Frank Zeccola, Bulldog Reporter

Read more!