Anaheim? They’ve Got an App for That
The City of Anaheim, CA, decided to rely on the old-fashioned medium of direct mail to promote a contest for ideas for newfangled online and mobile applications for a variety of city services, programs and commercial offerings.
The municipality received a 3.2% response rate to the mailing, which went out to 96,069 households between November and January, says Sinan Kanatsiz, CEO of KComm Communications, which developed the campaign.
This promotion was the city’s first such effort, he notes. Locals were invited to enter a contest to win $5,000 for submitting ideas for mobile apps for Water and Power, Parks and Recreation, Public Safety, Tourism/Sports/Entertainment, and the catchall category of “Anything Anaheim.”
The mailings, which cost about $16,000, were bundled into the local utility bills to all residents. They invited recipients to register on www.anaheimapps.org. In addition to the mail, Anaheim promoted the contest through a Facebook page and a video on YouTube.
Curt Pringle, the city’s mayor, came up with the idea for the contest, Kanatsiz notes.
“The contest was to come up with the greatest idea for an app for an iPhone or a BlackBerry, like ‘Show Me a Bike Trail’ or ‘The Quickest Line to Disneyland’ or ‘What’s Happening on Fridays in Anaheim,’” he says. The $5,000 in cash and prizes were donated by Starbucks, Disney and Flip Video.
The winning ideas included creating an account status app for water and power usage, an idea Kanatsiz says he’s now talking about with potential vendors and partners.
Another was to develop the “Anaheim Job Search Agent,” an online job search tool. Winning ideas will begin implementation later this year.
