Zippia. The team also organized a stay with a travel writer as she was venturing across the U.S. MONITORING THE IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC The Chamber launched a series of short surveys to further its understanding of the developing impact of the COVID-19 crisis on businesses and their resulting needs. The Chamber’s goal for these surveys was to understand the environment and pressures being faced by our member businesses in order to best develop resources and programming to help them. In total, six surveys were administered from March to November 2020. Hearing from businesses helped the Chamber better represent the interests of members to elected officials and allowed the Chamber to better connect the business community with resources, tools, and avenues for concrete solutions to COVID-related challenges. BOOSTING OKLAHOMA CITY BUSINESSES To promote members who were successfully adapting during the pandemic, the Chamber launched a weekly “Biz Boost” web series where guests engaged in a lively discussion of topics that included how businesses were pivoting operations in the COVID-19 environment, often in ways that benefited the community at large. Inspiration and tips to help listeners though difficult economic times were consistent themes of the webisodes. Many of OKC’s business leaders detailed how the COVID-19 situation forced a re-structure of their operations and how they adapted their work to help the community in the face of the pandemic.
M A R K E T I N G O K L A H O M A C I T Y
ELEVATING OKLAHOMA CITY’S WORKFORCE One of the Chamber’s newest events, Elevate, continued in 2020 in an online format. The professional development event was held online to increase the training available to the region’s workforce, many of whom were working from home during the pandemic. Elevate helped companies provide professional development options to their employees in a year where large-scale conferences were impossible to attend. The conference featured 24 breakout sessions with topics geared toward people in every phase of their career. Best-selling author Valorie Burton and Dr. Nathan Mellor, president of Strata Leadership, served as the two keynote speakers.
Through strategic marketing efforts, the Chamber worked to support Greater Oklahoma City’s key business sectors, promote the region as a great place to live and communicate the work of the Chamber to a broader audience. The Chamber reached thousands of people in the Oklahoma City business community through its websites, events, publications and targeted programs. PROMOTING OKC ON A NATIONAL STAGE In February, the Chamber embarked on a new and unique lifestyle public relations effort aimed at proliferating the message that OKC is a great place to live to a national audience. The effort aims to foster a more positive perception and more top- of-mind awareness of the Oklahoma City market, leading to the increased ability for businesses to recruit talent from other locations. As part of that project, representatives of an award- winning international hospitality, travel and luxury lifestyle public relations and social media agency, J Public Relations (JPR), visited Oklahoma City for an immersion trip. During their three-day visit, JPR and Chamber staff met with a number of Chamber members and community partners representing a variety of areas, including arts and culture, retail,
outdoor recreation, food and restaurants, brewing and distilling, development, housing, communications, entrepreneurship, local districts and more. The overall strategy involves JPR and Chamber staff working together to pitch and place stories through both traditional and new media about life in Oklahoma City, its residents, businesses, penchant for entrepreneurship and cooperation, and the kind of lifestyle OKC truly affords. As the pandemic changed travel plans, JPR and the Chamber adapted to how media were hosted by creating a series of virtual meetings with writers from national publications. Media attended panels on the following topics: adventure and wellness, breweries and spirits, culinary scene and arts and culture. The media were impressed by what they heard about Oklahoma City and some guests expressed interest in visiting. JPR and Chamber public relations staff have continued to keep Oklahoma City and its talented residents at top of mind as they hear from media seeking story ideas as well as pitching new placements and stories. The team has put Oklahoma City on popular websites such as Fodor’s Travel, Kiplinger, Apartment Therapy, Sherman’s Travel, and
Some of those featured included Michael Byrnes, president and general manager of the Oklahoma City Dodgers; Cathy Nestlen, communications and marketing director for the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma; Cyndi Tipps, regional claims executive CSAA Insurance; Daniel Maloney, CEO of Tailwind; Jon Skelly, VP of marketing for True Sky Credit Union; Jana Steelman, vice president of communications at United Way of Central Oklahoma and Deborah McAuliffe Senner, President/CEO of OKC Allied Arts.
The Chamber’s Biz Boost series highlighted Chamber members who re- structured their operations to help meet community needs during the pandemic.
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