Third Thursday PR Campaign - Shoppe3130

Date: October 17th

Time: 5pm-8pm
Location: Downtown North Augusta (specifically 510 West Avenue, North Augusta, SC 29841)
Team: Nicolle Brown, Loey Hudson, Grace Adams, Callie Sirmans, and Caleb Miller

Research

New apartments, restaurants, and businesses are popping up all over North Augusta.

Third Thursday is an event in Downtown North Augusta that happens on the 3rd Thursday of

every month (first Third Thursday took place in September 2019). The event aims to bring in

business and promote community in the city of North Augusta through local businesses. This is a

family friendly event. During this event, participating stores will have extended business hours

and special sales.

For October’s Third Thursday event, the theme is Trunk-Or-Treat (Halloween).

Businesses will have candy to give out for children & adults. Last month, the Sno-Cap restaurant

worked with the city of North Augusta to close off part of West Avenue to allow for more foot

traffic.

We are focusing on partnering with Shoppe3130 for this event. Shoppe3130 is a family-

run business founded by Jenny & Jesse Elliot that opened August of 2019. They hand make

leather, cork and wooden earrings, children' costumes and party decorations. In addition to the

handmade items, Shoppe3130 sells children's clothing, shoes and accessories, ladies accessories

and gift items. They focus on Christian values and a family-friendly atmosphere. For the Third

Thursday event Shoppe 3130 will be offering the following sales:

Specific deals they will be offering for this event: $5 off $25 and $10 off $50 or more.

*doorbuster deals were put into place the day of the event as well
 The target customer for Shoppe3130 ranges from women in young-adulthood, to moms

and mature women. Below is the analysis of the Instagram followers of Shoppe 3130. We found

that most of the businesses Instagram followers were 25-44 years old.

Demographic from Instagram analytics:

Age 18-24 (9%); 25-34 (35%); 35-44 (35%); 45-54 (12%); 55-64 (6%); 65+ (2%)

Top Locations: Augusta 23% | North Augusta 14% | Evans 5% | Aiken 2% | Martinez 1%

Gender 88% Female | 12% Male

Objectives

Our PR group decided on the following four objectives to attempt to accomplish by the

end of our campaign. We decided on these objectives because we felt they would best measure

our success as a PR group as well as to measure the success of the event.

1. To publicize Third Thursday to AU students, Augusta citizens, and North Augusta

residents.

2. To have three businesses repost/utilize/“share” our advertisement materials.

3. To have 100 people attend the event

4. To see at least 100 comments/likes/views of those excited to participate in this event.

Program

This month's theme of Third Thursday is Trunk or Treat (Halloween). Our plan of action

is to use social media marketing strategies to spread the word about the event. We will utilize

Instagram and Facebook to make posts about the event. We plan on encouraging the

participating businesses to use our advertising graphics on their social media pages to promote

the event and their business. We will also send out a newsletter via Email to VIP Rewards
shoppers that have shopped at Shoppe 3130 in the past. Our intention with the email newsletter is

to have previous customers return to shop. We will also create an informational tri-fold that will

contain an abundance of information on the event (a copy of our tri-fold can be found in the

appendix section of this portfolio). Our PR group plans on passing out flyers that we created the

week of the event to students on AU’s campus, inviting them to come to the event. We will also

go around to local businesses and hang up our flyers on their community bulletin boards.

Evaluation

After our campaign was over we all looked back at our objectives and evaluated our

success. There were well over 100 people that attended the event, and over 350 people shared

that they were going or went to the event on Facebook. We had multiple students from Augusta

University attend the event as well as members of the Augusta, North Augusta, and Aiken

communities. We surpassed our goal of having 3 or more businesses share our controlled media

by having Snow Cap, Downtown North Augusta, North Augusta Chamber of Commerce, and the

AU Comm department share our post. We were happy to see that we received the interest that we

anticipated through social media, as well as the large amount of positive feedback we received

through social channels after the event. Shoppe 3130 saw an overall 200% increase in sales

during the Third Thursday event!

We had about 20 people that came into Shoppe 3130 verbally mentioned that they

enjoyed the event. On social media people mentioned that they didn’t get a chance to come to

Third Thursday come to the event, but are looking forward to going to the November event.

Once the event was over one of our team members analyzed our Facebook and Instagram to see

how many people we really reached with our posts. Shoppe 3130 was tagged in 4 Instagram

Posts promoting Third Thursday, which reached every one of their followers. Our media was
also shared on 4 different businesses Instagram stories. We didn’t get as many likes on Instagram

and Facebook as we would have hoped, we obtained 29 likes. We think this was because we only

looked at the likes from the single post we put up. Our facebook post was shared 3 different

times. The instagram story that promoted the event had a total of 4,825 views which we viewed

as a great success. The email newsletter that was sent out to the VIP shoppers (487 people) has a

31% open rate.

Overall our group would call our PR campaign for Third Thursday and Shoppe 3130 a

success. We are grateful for the many businesses that participated and played a role in the event's

success. We hope to use the skills and knowledge gained from this experience in our future

endeavours.