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Syracuse University parents first stopped frequenting Cathy Pemberton’s business due to the coronavirus pandemic. Shortly after that, Pemberton’s wholesale business partners followed.

Pemberton owns Cathy’s Cookie Kitchen in downtown Syracuse. Although she kept her business open throughout the pandemic, customers weren’t able to come inside her store until June.

But with the Downtown Committee of Syracuse’s “Put the U Back in Syrac_se” campaign, which launched Sept. 2, Pemberton is already seeing an increase in business.

“It’s just a great opportunity to do that for the community and to possibly reach new people that never heard of me before,” Pemberton said. “And that’s what happened. A bunch of people came in that hadn’t been here before, so it was nice.”

The eight-week campaign encourages members of the community to reenter local businesses in Syracuse that the coronavirus pandemic has financially impacted. The Downtown Committee of Syracuse runs the initiative with the help of Mower, an advertising agency.

The initiative features more than 65 businesses and celebrates the resurgence of local stores and restaurants, said Alice Maggiore, director of communications at the Downtown Committee of Syracuse.

“Collectively, we’re all working to highlight not only what makes downtown Syracuse such an amazing place to live, work, do business and recreate, but also what makes central New York such an amazing place,” Maggiore said.

Mower created a virtual scavenger hunt through the app Scavify to encourage people to return to downtown Syracuse and frequent the surrounding businesses in a safe way. The app presents participants with locations and businesses around Onondaga County that they must upload photos of to receive points.

By earning points, individuals join a prize pool that includes items and experiences that local businesses donated. Pemberton donated a $25 gift card to Cathy’s Cookie Kitchen as one of the prizes.

Although Maggiore hasn’t calculated the total prize value, she said it’s in the thousands.

“‘Put the U back in Syrac_se’ really celebrates how far we’ve come as a community and our progress as we continue to reopen and weather all the issues brought on by the pandemic,” Maggiore said.

So far, 225 people have participated in the virtual scavenger hunt so far and have collectively completed over 500 tasks, said Stephanie Crockett, executive vice president and managing director at Mower.

Along with the virtual scavenger hunt, local artist Ally Walker helped promote the initiative by creating a mural on the Mill Pond Landing building in downtown Syracuse. Maggiore has enjoyed the photos that community members have posted with the mural and the hashtag #Syrac_se.

Crockett has even noticed local companies that are not involved in “Put the ‘U’ Back in Syracuse” rallying behind the campaign and the local businesses it supports.

“It’s just a great way that other businesses locally are helping to support the campaign because they of course want to support their friends who own the restaurants and the retail shops,” Crockett said.

Mower began working on the project with the Downtown Committee of Syracuse three months ago. The agency created the advertising and social media for the campaign and came up with the name and coordinated with Black Cub Productions, which filmed the campaign video and took photos for the advertisements.

Crockett and the team at Mower worked closely with Syracuse City Hall, Visit Syracuse and the Onondaga County Office of the County Executive to ensure the campaign was encouraging a safe and socially responsible return to local businesses.

“(The completion of scavenger hunt tasks) really shows us that people are getting out into the community. They are going down and visiting these businesses and seeing these attractions and things and taking photos and uploading them into the app and participating,” Crockett said. “It’s been really, really exciting to see the response already.”

For business owners such as Pemberton, the campaign brings hope that people visiting downtown for the scavenger hunt will return to their businesses again, she said.

“I just think it’s a really cool idea and I’m glad that they did it, and I like that the downtown committee is constantly working to find new ways to bring people in to help the small businesses that are down here,” Pemberton said. “It’s great.”

Published on September 14, 2020 at 9:33 pm

Contact Sydney: sabergan@syr.edu