Gathering Public Support For Change
 The
Challenge: For years, the north end of Broadway, home to most
of Oakland's new car dealers, suffered from blight and neglect.
Business was down. Automobile franchises faced pressure from their
manufacturers to move to the suburbs. The City of Oakland was studying
the situation and staff had recommended that the City Council consider
a redevelopment plan. The auto dealers, for their part, formed an
association to try to get the word out about the changes that would
be coming.
The biggest challenge was convincing potential
new car buyers that big changes were taking place along Broadway
Auto Row - the new name given to that 20-block strip of Broadway
- before many of those changes actually took place.
The Solution: To get the ball rolling,
we started with a paid "advertorial" spread in the Oakland
Business Review, followed by press kits and new press releases as
each phase of the coming project was approved.
Four months after the campaign began, on
the same morning a major article appeared in the Oakland Tribune,
a camera crew from KPIX-TV in San Francisco showed up. That night,
viewers of the Channel 5 Eyewitness News saw a four-minute report
detailing the coming bright future for Broadway Auto Row.
Results:The Oakland City Council
unanimously approved a $3 million plan to renovate the Broadway
Auto Row district.
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