The City of Greer has won the Municipal Association of South Carolina’s 2020 Achievement Award for the area of communications.
The honor was given based on the City of Greer’s communications efforts for the CenterG Streetscape Project. Those measures were enacted by a collaborative effort from marketing professionals from the City of Greer, Greer CPW, Greer Development Association and the Greater Greer Chamber of Commerce, with assistance from R.A. Weston Communications in Greer.
“We made a commitment while planning this project to help promote our downtown businesses and to keep our public aware of such issues as transportation, navigating around construction and the current state of work,” Greer City Administrator Ed Driggers said. “Bringing together communications and marketing professionals from our partner organizations – those who already know and love the City of Greer – was the best way to do that.”
The MASC Achievement Awards have, since 1987, recognized superior and innovative efforts in local government. In addition to four population categories for smaller municipalities, it presents awards in the categories communications, economic development, public safety, public service and public works. Municipalities may enter only one category annually.
The City of Greer was the only winner representing the upstate in the 2020 competition.
The CenterG team’s communications plan for the 18-month project included the FutureGreer.com website as well as a broadcast, print, social media and billboard campaign. It also included special events, promotional giveaways, merchant-relations efforts and news media outreach.
The communications team created all material in-house to allow more to be spent on distribution. A magazine, created in partnership with The Greer Citizen newspaper and supported by advertising from local businesses, captured the project for posterity. The city also used virtual reality goggles to demonstrate what the finished streets would look like.
Communications for CenterG placed a strong emphasis on marketing businesses in the impacted area. The city spent $15,000 on $5 gift cards to encourage shoppers to go downtown during construction. Another key solution came in the form of a downtown shuttle service to connect parking to businesses during construction, complete with an app to find shuttles. Shuttle drivers served as downtown ambassadors.