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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Campaign urges Winnipeggers to 'Do Downtown'

By: Geoff Kirbyson

Posted: 08/26/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

The Downtown BIZ has launched a campaign to entice people to visit pubs, restaurants and shops as part of an evening out. (MIKE.DEAL@FREEPRESS.MB.CA)

The Downtown Business Improvement Zone has launched its first marketing campaign in three years to lure Winnipeggers to the city's core, asking them to "Do Downtown".

The tag line adorns billboards, posters and magazine ads where happy people are shown in various downtown locales, such as restaurants, pubs and shops.

The goal, according to Nisha Tuli, manager of marketing and communications for the Downtown BIZ, is to convince people who never come downtown to give it a chance and those who work within a few blocks of Portage and Main to hang around after hours.

"We'd like people to make a night of coming downtown. If you have theatre tickets, come downtown and have dinner before the show. Then maybe meet some friends for a drink afterwards," she said.

Tuli said it's not that downtown Winnipeg has morphed back into the ghost town of decades past but instead, that the need for this type of marketing campaign will never end.

"Visits to downtown are up, they're going up all the time. It's an ongoing thing to develop downtown. We always want more and more people to create a vibrant downtown," she said.

Tuli said the tag line is a play on the popular expression "let's do lunch."

It's about doing downtown to the fullest and doing it right," Tuli said.

She and Stefano Grande, executive director of the Downtown Biz, denied the campaign had any sexual undertones.

Grande said he could see how some people could misread the intent but he stressed the Downtown Biz has no X-rated mandate.

"It's more meant to remind people that there are wonderful things to do downtown. Nike says "just do it." "Do Winnipeg" definitely connects with the demographic we're wanting to attract downtown. I can tell you unequivocally, the sexual side of things isn't something we even thought of," he said.

One local marketing expert gives the campaign a thumbs up. Rob Warren, I.H. Asper executive director for entrepreneurship at the Stu Clark Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Manitoba, said he believes the missive counters some of downtown's negative stereotypes.

"Most people don't necessarily think of downtown Winnipeg when they think of a classy evening. They think of (seedy) hotels and bars. The fact the billboards show people dressed up for an evening out says a lot about the message the BIZ is trying to convey," he said.

Warren said he can see the double entendre with the slogan but doesn't think it was done on purpose.

"If they had racier photos of people in bars, maybe. I think it's more of a take off of the old Nike 'just do it' campaign," he said.

Grande said the last thing the Downtown Biz's 1,400 members want to see is people parachuting in for their event, such as a Manitoba Moose or Winnipeg Goldeyes game, and heading back to the suburbs immediately afterwards.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 26, 2009 B3

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