The Town of Bradford West Gwillimbury’s Office of Economic Development (OED) has won another highly prestigious marketing award from the Economic Developers Association of Canada (EDAC), for its innovative video series Meet the Owners, which profiled and promoted a diverse group of downtown merchants during the COVID pandemic. The videos were jointly produced with Amplify Marketing & Communications, with grant support from the County of Simcoe’s Economic Development Funding Program. Award winners were formally acknowledged at EDAC’s Annual Conference on October 4 in Kingston, Ontario.
“Our Council is very excited that Canada’s national economic developers association chose to recognize BWG once again with this highly-respected marketing award, acknowledging the innovative work we undertook to promote our downtown business owners during the challenging period caused by the COVID pandemic,” said Mayor Rob Keffer. “Congratulations to our Economic Development staff, Michael Disano and Michael Kemp, and our consultants Amplify Marketing & Communications Canada, for their tremendous work in winning this highly-competitive prize. Thank you as well to the County of Simcoe Office of Economic Development for the grant funding that made this possible. Well done!”
BWG won in the category of Promotional Videos, which acknowledged the creative efforts and challenges of producing a promotional video series during COVID. This the second EDAC marketing award in two years received by BWG, following a win in 2020 for the Town’s Economic Development Marketing Strategy (Brand Development), also with Amplify.
“As Chair of the Town’s Economic Development Advisory Committee, I’m thrilled that EDAC has acknowledged the fantastic work that went into this creative video campaign,” said Deputy Mayor James Leduc. “COVID created a very challenging environment for our merchants and I’m pleased to see our promotional efforts acknowledged with this coveted award.”
A promotional campaign to support downtown merchants was identified in the BWG COVID Resiliency & Recovery Economic Development Strategy (November 2020) and the development of a series of video vignettes was supported by the BWG Downtown Revitalization Committee. The OED successfully applied for grant funding from the County of Simcoe’s Economic Development Funding Program to fully cover the cost of the videos.