Renew Downtown Woodstock

The City Of Woodstock was trying to survey as many citizens as possible to elaborate an urban renovation plan that would revitalize the downtown area, which had taken a beat during the pandemic.

They needed my help to reach as wide an audience as possible, as most of their efforts were attracting members of the public already involved in politics, leaving out a good proportion of the population. They also needed to connect with more young people, as ultimately the renewed area would be theirs to enjoy in the future.

To address the issue head-on, I knew it would be necessary to ensure the messaging centred around making everyone's voices heard, as primary research talking to residents indicated a feeling of neglect and disconnect between their needs and government plans.

To ensure we reached a younger audience, we leveraged all available ad placements on Facebook and Instagram, limiting the reach exclusively to people under 45 and leaving out the audience network to concentrate budget allocation on the two platforms. We also designed a landing page that served as an intermediary between the surveying platform and the ads, explaining the project and exciting people about the possibilities for what their city could look like thanks to their feedback.

Using headlines such as "Help us design a better downtown" or "Make your voice heard", not only did we generate a lot of paid survey responses but also a significant amount of organic replies thanks to users sharing the ads with people.

When the campaign was over, we had generated far more survey responses than anticipated in a 40,000-inhabitant city and at a very inexpensive cost for the local government thanks to the organic reach of the campaign.