Center City Business Association

Challenge

Founded in 1978 as the Center City Proprietors Association, the now named Center City Business Association is a leading nonprofit chamber of commerce focused on serving business leaders in Philadelphia by providing connections, insights, and resources. Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, Center City Business engaged Slice Communications to help get attention around their rebrand and name change while also modernizing their approach to marketing through social media and content development, with a focus on engaging current members and sponsors, targeting new members and sponsors, and reaching the community-at-large.

Insights

When planning for a rebrand, it’s important to consider who the target audience is, determine what messages they need to hear regarding the name change, and what is the best way they should receive this new information. For Center City Business, its top audiences included its members, sponsors, partnering organizations, and the business community in Philadelphia. To share their story and new name, the Slice team decided to narrow its focus by partnering with those who have been most impacted by the association: their members and city leaders. We collaborated on a video that simultaneously shared the exciting news while also featuring these members, front and center.

With the launch of a new brand comes the need to remind the audience of the organization’s key messages. To do so, the Slice team focused on emphasizing their messaging through content development and social media storytelling.

Keeping in mind the five types of content, we first launched a new blog recap series, sharing key insights from the organization’s event series, including “Lunch with the City’s Leaders” and “Meet the Developers,” aimed at driving website traffic. Secondly, we launched an article series focused on engaging members by asking them questions about their experiences, aimed at helping guide other businesses who could also benefit from membership.

On social media, our approach focuses on sharing the Association’s expertise while also weaving in news from its members and the city of Philadelphia. This involved keeping an eye on each social channel and finding what works best for each channel, whether it be live event updates and insights on Twitter or business leader spotlights on LinkedIn. Additionally, to help amplify their various events and happenings, Slice worked to arm their partners and speakers with unique social media kits to use among their own network to help increase the reach of the Association’s events.

Success

Overall, our work with Center City Business Association has helped generate more awareness around the organization and increased engagement from active members and prospective members. On social media, activity has increased dramatically, with a 44% increase in impressions and a 179% increase in social media engagements – a majority of which came from LinkedIn. In terms of content, our team has developed over ten pieces, creating touchpoints to engage with many of their members.