I continue to see stacks of old 2023 Explore Aurora Fall/Winter Guides in multiple locations around town. Here’s one spotted at a local Shoppers Drug mart today relegated to a miserable space below the stack of unread Neigh-bore Media publication formerly known as Snap’d:
It is spring and we are in Q2 of 2024 so why have these unread blue-box fillers not been removed way back at the beginning of the year?
With minimal copies picked up in multiple location it suggests a needless overprinting occured.
Exactly how many people require a paper guide in 2024?
Investigating to see if a 2024 spring/summer edition was printed I learn that one wasn’t and that this effort will return to its previous schedule of being an uninspiring annual publication:
I wonder if this means they will be returning to the hot mess of inflating it with outside of aurora businesses like I pointed out in my 2020 post.
In this 2023 Wall/Winter guide I counted 6 ads for businesses outside aurora and 27 ads for businesses in aurora. The “Restarant and shopping guide” lists only 55 businesses. So 82 Aurora businesses in total.
Is that all the businesses in Aurora the Chamber belives are worth shopping at?
How sad.
Another problem with leaving these copies in circulation is that it appears the Message from the Mayor on the inside cover is factually incorrect.
The Mayor claims that Town Square is set to officially open in Spring 2024:
This is weird, given that no dates are listed on the the full page ad on page 25 the town paid for. Instead it just reads “soon”. I guess one department didn’t want to include a mention of date because they were unsure about completion, but the mayor must have used those “strong” mayor powers of his to be so certain of the opening of a mega build that has been plagued with so many delays that it is no suprise to anyone but him that it now is slated to open fall of 2024.
As this ad is paid for by the town, surely it would be in their best interest to not have these copies circulating about well after their sell by date, especialy when it appears they are footing a large part of the bill on this iniative.
If we rewind to these 2020 Council Highlights we see a $10,0000 spend in 2020 towards the print version. Then the Chamber requested an additional $12,000, so $22,000 in total:
It is curious that the town spends as much time, attention and ad spend on this publication because when you go the link on the town’s website the the guide isn’t the outdated one from 2023 but from 2020:
A bigger question is why the town is being asked for $ at all. How is this whole thing not sustainable given the ad revenue.
Here are the rate sheets , also shared on social. Notice that they are declaring a partnership with Neigh-bore Media:
If we add up the ads in the 2023 Fall/Winter edition and applied these rated there would be over $30,000 in ad revenue including the town spending $4,000 on the aforementioned advertisement amongst the inside front @ $1,700, and 2 full pages @ $1,250 each.
If this publication can’t be printed for $30,000 and they need to come begging to the town for more $ then perhaps the costs behind it need to be scaled back. One immediate way to do this is to drop the print run entirely.
But when we return to the 2024 guide announcement we see the plan is for a print run of 20,000. With 5,000 being mailed to homes.
WTF?
Why are only 5,000 being distributed to homes? Are some homes in Aurora more desirable to send these to than others?
20,000 copies is absurd. As what is poised to happen with the unread copies of the 2023 guides this entire exercise puts a needless strain on the regional recycling system, using resources and producing an overall negative impact on the environment.
The town has numerous climate policies on their website yet they are paying to advertise in print marketing that obviously isn’t being read.
This needs to be corrected.
Print magazines are marketing materials in their death throes, desperately propped up as solutions from those that were in business over 30 years ago. They are not an appropriate marketing solution in 2024 and you would think this resource would have just migrated fully to the web with a reduced print run of say $2-3,000 copies brought out at different events and high traffic locations.
But then you go an explore the website to find it is a hot mess itself appearing to not be updated for 2024.
The section referencing the guide lists the 2023 Spring/Summer guide, no mention of the Fall/Winter one:
Downtown Aurora lists in the description a feature of Machell’s Alley, includes a banner for it as well as a section under Downtown Projects:
One small problem. Machell’s Alley isn’t in operation in 2024 and wasn’t in operation in all of 2023.
The Specials area is obviously unnecessary as it is populated with a single current offers indicating this is a ghost site no buy-in from local businesses:
There is strangely a Sports Tourism section which just presents a jumbled word salad that includes mention of a Sport Visitor Experience Package, yet no link to it:
The content in the video carousels are duplicated in different sections, notice the same business being featured twice, perhaps because of not having enough content:
When exploring featured businesses the container for image is set to fill forcing the image to be cut-off, which in the case of people is very unfortunate:
The entire look and feel of this site is very dated and amateurish. It lacks consistency, attention to detail, and any effort to maintain the site so that it retains and engages visitors.
When we look under the hood web audits are not very favourable:
Another red flag is that this website doesn’t appear to be hosted in Canada but the USA:
The DNS provider suggests it was hosted in Canada previously, so I’m unsure why it would have been conciously been moved. I believe hosting in Canada is requirement for Municipal governments so I’m not sure if they realize this or would be concerned about having a database like this offshore.
Also disappointingly the 2023 community sponsor listed on the site is also not in Aurora, but a radio station operating out of Woodbridge:
But somehow we are to believe the hashtag #itsallhere?
In the footer it states the site is developed by an outfit named Addision Marketing Solutions, which also has an add in the 2023 publication, and are listed as a sponsor on the website.
One small fact. They are not an Aurora based business.
Why is the Chamber and the town not shopping and supporting local when it comes to this type of service? If the Chamber is unable to source a local business the town could put this out for RFP with a condition that the business be local.
I’m all for encouraging others to Explore Aurora, but at least do so yourselves.
#StopPrintRunsof20000
#HireAProperWebDeveloper
#UpdateYourSelfBeforeYouWreckYourself
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