Case Studies

Little Italy

Services Rendered

Little Italy

San Diego’s Little Italy is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) corporation for the public’s benefit, the Little Italy Association (LIA) advocates on behalf of its members’ best interests in the areas of public safety, beautification, promotion and economic development, while preserving the unique cultural resources that exist in the Little Italy neighborhood of Downtown San Diego. LIA stands as the only district management corporation of its kind for any Little Italy neighborhood in the United States and is run by a Board of Directors encompassing 32 people who represent property owners, residents, businesses and community at large.

San Diego’s Little Italy is a 21st century model neighborhood for how other City center neighborhoods and Downtowns should operate. In the last 20 years, Little Italy San Diego has had nearly 5,000 new apartments and condos built in the neighborhood and increased sales tax revenues by 43%, and in the last five years the number of businesses in the neighborhood has nearly doubled.

When the Little Italy Association connected with Olive, we were tasked with the challenge to maintain and increase visibility of this premier neighborhood with regional and national media relations and an engaged social media campaign.

The olive way

The Solution

At Olive, we always start the same way: we discuss the ultimate vision when the client is at its fullest potential. Once we have a clear view of what that looks like, we can begin to build a cohesive media relations and social media campaign that is in alignment. Next, we identify the values. With the vision of expression and core values, we can begin to develop the storyline. We believe that effective campaigns are confident and collected. This means you always have a strategy and plan in place to ensure you are sharing information in a way that serves to reinforce the values and truly illuminate the greatness that exists–this is key when aligning a strategy across both media relations and social media.

In a community like Little Italy, there is a lot going on, so it’s important to begin to build the framework around the community’s key events first. Then, we move onto the lifestyle piece and finally, the exciting part–thought leadership and national travel and tourism. While creating this strategic plan, the media relations team and social media team work in tandem to ensure media opportunities are scheduled within the social media calendar, there are consistent seasonal themes and marketing efforts are cohesive–this is crucial to the storytelling process and ensuring that all channels are complementing one another.

The social media campaign mirrors the media relations strategy, only the communication is visual, conversational and most importantly–engaging. We focused on growing the social media followings through unique curated content, high-quality imagery, content from fans, giveaways, editorial features and targeted advertising campaigns. In addition, we build successful hashtag campaigns that encouraged fans and social influencers to contribute posts about the brand, expanding our organic social reach, like #LittleItalySD, #DogsofLittleItaly, #ThatRedChairSD, #BuonNataleSD, etc.

Just The Facts

The Results

Since the launch of this campaign, we have aggressively grown media exposure to position and validate San Diego’s Little Italy as the number one Little Italy neighborhood in the nation through credible regional, national and international media. This strong visibility has directly impacted fundraising efforts and increased ticket sales and attendance at community events—Trick-or-Treat on India Street, Little Italy Tree Lighting and Christmas Village, Ferragosto, Taste of Little Italy, and more. This has also opened the doors to incredible new opportunities like getting featured in a new documentary backed by the Russo Brothers, BIG CITY, Little Italy, set to premiere at the National Italian American Foundation Gala later this year.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, with campaigns like Ciao Bella and Al Fresco dining, we positioned Little Italy as an industry leader. Events known and loved by all were pivoted like Taste of Little Italy, which had a Take-Out Edition and the annual Little Italy Tree Lighting and Christmas Village had a virtual edition, The Little Italy Holiday Special. We also supported the addition of two new holiday events: JOY! and Giuseppe the Elf and turned Small Business Saturday into Small Business Season.

By aligning our social media strategy with media relations, we’ve been able to successfully grow a more engaged online community. Today, Little Italy has over 72,000 followers on Facebook, 45,000 followers on Instagram and 7,000 followers on Twitter. We’ve relied on authentic community management to build and grow Little Italy’s digital presence while maintaining higher-than-average engagement rates.

With the combination of social media and media relations, San Diego’s Little Italy is now viewed as the top neighborhood and top culinary hub in San Diego and a top travel destination to visit.