CITY

Promotion

We are attracting, delivering, facilitating, and partnering with others on events to drive footfall, increase spending, and raise perceptions and awareness of Sunderland.

With new partners onboard and more infrastructure under construction within the city, our we are growing the staple events we already have on the calendar, including Sunderland Food and Drink Festival, Make Music Day, Fear on the Wear Halloween activities and Sunderland Restaurant Week.

We also want to attract more food and music events with cultural elements and partner with our stakeholders to enhance the variety of experiences coming into the city.

Street Animation brings out the strengths of Sunderland, enhancing both the visitor and resident experience, making it more welcoming, dynamic and fun.

We are supporting and sponsoring events, unlocking spaces, and promoting Sunderland City Centre as an events destination.

Animating the streets has worked tremendously well alongside significant city events and was highly popular during the recent concerts of Ed Sheeran, Beyoncé, P!NK and Elton John.

We have proved that bringing public spaces to life with music and performances adds to the streets’ vibrancy and memorability, generating both direct sales and national and global PR.

We are bringing more commercial partners into the city centre  to secure high-quality activation and increase public engagement on a more regular basis.

Due to the remarkable success of the Sunderland Gift Card, we are strengthening the offer to lock even more spending into our local economy.

It is an initiative equally welcomed by a range of national retailers and independent businesses. Keeping money in Sunderland is a priority, and we are building solid campaigns to help drive sales and push for the Sunderland Gift Card to become the main reward for different initiatives.

We are securing more corporate sales and encouraging businesses to gift their employees the Sunderland Gift Card.

We are continuing to review the current offer to ensure quality, adding more businesses, and improving the selling points and purchasing journey.

We have worked hard to create the BID’s digital presence and will continue using digital channels to raise the profile of what Sunderland city centre offers residents and visitors.

We are open to new ways of promotion to stay relevant and on-trend, and by doing so, we will create new opportunities for businesses to promote themselves.

We encourage more businesses to share content, maximise crosspromotion and spread positive PR.

We want all businesses to benefit from promotional opportunities generated in the city centre, and we will look to build links between retailers, food and drink, hotels, and other sectors.