Let’s work together to make Bognor Regis the brightest, most colourful town to visit this festive season!
With your help and creative genius, we can establish Bognor Regis as THE place to visit for amazing window displays, fantastic lights, brilliant gifts and seasonal staples, and a great place to enjoy Christmas.
This year’s focus is on the values and experience of Christmas, rather than any messaging that might add to financial pressures. Another key element is sustainability and respecting the environment, which is going to be reflected in the materials we use, and in our social media posts and online activities. Christmas 2021 overview:
This year’s Christmas design features the message “Colour Your Christmas”, and we’re aiming to deliver a fabulously bright and cheery public realm. All of the BID’s installations will be back, lighting up the different areas of the town, and co-ordinated banners will be brightening up the high-level sightlines. We’ll be producing elements from the design (baubles, reindeer, Christmas tree) as re-usable window vinyls for businesses to display, so even if you don’t have a ground floor unit, you can still join in!
We’re delivering a full social media campaign in-house, using the “christmasbognorregis.co.uk” website and social channels that were a great way of connecting with people last year. This year, we’ll be adding Instagram as a platform, too.
Key dates:
Deadline for business sign-ups: Friday October 29th, 2021
BRTC's & BID's Christmas Lights Switch On: Saturday 27th November 2021
Late night opening: (until 7pm) Saturday 27th November 2021
Christmas Bognor Regis website live: Monday 8th December 2021
Focus weekend: 11th & 12th December: BID focus weekend for activities, including sustainable crafting workshops with WSCC and live music in and around the town centre
Ice Rink: At the time of writing, we know the Ice Rink Operators are working with ADC to find an alternative location for the ice rink, so we’re hopeful we’ll see them back in Bognor Regis this winter!
GET INVOLVED 1: Amazing Christmas Window Displays
This is the BIG THING for 2021, and we need your help to make it happen! Let’s make Bognor Regis THE place to visit for amazing Christmas windows!
Building on the success of last year’s competition, there are FANTASTIC prizes for the top three winners, and a host of promotion opportunities over the Christmas period for every business taking part.
There are two elements to the window displays – the competition (for businesses), and the trail (to encourage visitors to the town centre).
Take Part! Decorate your window as creatively and colourfully as possible, ideally including elements of the key themes for this year: Christmas trees, baubles, lots of colour, sustainability. Your display is going to attract a lot of footfall to your window, and your business, so really go to town!
Let us know you’re taking part so we can schedule photographers, promotion etc – see overleaf for sign up details. You’ll need to sign up by FRIDAY 29th OCTOBER. You can sign up by :
clicking on the button below, or
visiting www.brbid.org/christmas or
simply emailing info@brbid.org
Get creative with your window displays – they need to be completed by the date of the Christmas Lights switch on: SATURDAY 27TH NOVEMBER.
The Christmas Window Display Trail
The purpose of the trail is to encourage people into the town centre to visit all the shop windows ... and hopefully support businesses from all sectors while they’re doing the trail!
We'll provide hard copies of the trail map for you to give out, and it’s entirely up to you if you want to create an additional incentive to encourage them inside ..!
The trail is open to all businesses in the BID Area, whether you’re a levy payer or not. All of the town centre’s Christmas lights come on at midday, so this is going to draw footfall to your business premises whether you’re in the daytime or night time economy.
The competition element is open to all independent businesses within the BID area, whether you are a levy payer or not. To keep things fair and manageable, we’ll be using the same approach to voting as last year – an online poll that allows one vote per voter. Prizes will be awarded to businesses based on highest number of votes in the poll.
You’ll be able to link to the poll from your own website, and we’ll be encouraging Bognor Regis Facebook group admins to support local businesses by sharing links through their pages, too!
You’ll find full terms and conditions for entry and prize details at: www.brbid.org/competitionterms
How will my business benefit by taking part?
The trail and the competition are going to be heavily promoted through the “ChristmasBognorRegis” website and all social channels, as well as all BID social channels, and all other local pages reposting / sharing the link.
By entering, you’ll be given the licence to use the high-quality images of your windows for your own use to encourage votes for your business through your own social media channels.
Full page advertorials focusing on the competition in the Bognor Regis Observer on 9th December, with the three highest voted businesses featuring in a follow up full page advertorial on 23rd December 2021
The competition element is also going to be promoted on V2 radio in December, so that's a lot of listeners potentially heading to your window ...
The Trail is being promoted on Greatest Hits Radio throughout November and December, driving listeners to the ChristmasBognorRegis/windows web page where your business window will feature in glorious, hi-res technicolour.
The trail is being promoted in a prime location in the Winter edition of the Primary Times, which is distributed through over 43,000 bookbags in schools across the West Sussex area. The advert will drive them to the ChristmasBognorRegis/windows page to download the map ... where they’ll see a great looking gallery of all entrants, including yours!
We're also producing a “Trail Map”, which will be available to download online and in print form, literally bringing people to your door.
And just in case you’re still undecided ... there are some AMAZING prizes to be won by taking part:
FIRST PRIZE
You are going to LOVE this from our friends at Bourne Leisure – a week’s holiday for up to four family members at ANY of the Bourne Leisure destinations around the country! Pull out all the stops in your display and you could be taking a well-deserved break at any of the Haven, Warner Leisure Hotels or Butlins’ UK locations in 2022.
SECOND PRIZE
This is an immense prize from V2 Radio! They’re offering an amazing two months’ advertising package valued at £2950. The prize includes the scripting and production of your 30 second bespoke advert, and an incredible airtime exposure with a total of 300 plays, based on five ads a day for sixty days!
THIRD PRIZE
To support our fantastic indie businesses, The Bognor Observer are offering an incredible print & digital advertising package worth £650, which you can use however works best for you in 2022!
The package is for 4 x half pages in the Observer Series covering Bognor, Chichester, Midhurst & Petworth, AND 35,000 unique display impressions to run over 28 days on www.bognor.co.uk
Based on print & digital monthly audience figures, this is going to promote your business to an audience of over 150,000 readers during course of the campaign! It’s up to you to choose how you’d like to use the print ads – you might prefer 2 x full pages or 8 x quarter pages – the Observer team are open to all options!
GET INVOLVED 2: Late Night Opening
Let’s really take advantage of the extra footfall that comes into town to see the lights on the day of the switch on – which, as we saw last year - happens even when there’s not an “event”.
We’re therefore encouraging all daytime economy businesses to extend your opening hours until 7pm to benefit from that extra footfall, and add extra vibrancy to the town centre on the 27th November.
Just let us know if you’re planning to stay open, and we’ll make sure your business is promoted!
GET INVOLVED 3: Traditional Market Barrow
If you’d like to promote seasonal specials, or operate from a high footfall location in the run up to Christmas, then why not wrap up and use the BID’s eye-catching market barrow to trade from the London Road on General Market Days?
The barrow is available on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 2nd November.
Use of the market barrow will be free to all levy paying businesses (£20 hire charge to non-levy payers), and you’ll need to pay £25 for the day’s pitch. The barrow is available on the following dates:
November: 2,6,9,13,16,20,23,27,30
December: 4, 7,11,14,18,21
The barrow is being offered on a first come, first come first served basis, and is subject to the terms and conditions of trading on the general market (including public liability insurance.)
SIGN UP NOW! We need to know who’s taking part so we can start promoting businesses! You can sign up online: www.brbid.org/christmas Or by emailing info@brbid.org with the below information: Name Email Business I'm going to take part in:
Window competition
Window Trail
Late night shopping until 7pm on 27th November
Market Barrow
We need all responses by the absolute, unmoveable deadline of Friday 29th October 2021
If you have any questions please feel free to contact any of the BID Team at info@brbid.org
With best wishes,
Heather Allen BID Co-Ordinator