Agency to fight increasing competition from national grocery chains
Vancouver’s Granville Island district has retained Saint Bernadine Mission Communications as its agency of record after a formal review.
Lisa Ono, manager of public affairs and programming for the federally-run organization, said 14 agencies applied. They ranged from one-person shops to the largest players in the Vancouver market.
Granville Island, a popular tourist spot that houses a public market, year-round entertainment, restaurants, artisans and a university, has a total marketing budget of just under $1 million, said Ono.
David Walker, a partner at Saint Bernadine, said Granville’s consumer target groups are local residents who shop at the public market on a regular basis, foodies willing to travel to the market once a week for the experience and hard-to-find items and tourists.
Saint Bernadine’s has held the account since 2008, and Ono said they’ve been extremely pleased with their work. (Granville runs mandatory reviews every three years.)
“We have a great relationship with [Saint Bernadine]. We have a very modest budget that we work with, and they really leverage it well for us and they’ve been really strategic with it,” she said, adding that the advent of grocery stores such as Whole Foods and Urban Fare that promote locally grown, fresh produce, have increased competitive pressure on Granville’s homegrown brand.
“We are competing against some very big players with some very big budgets. That’s probably [our] single biggest challenge: just maintaining our presence,” said Ono.
