Newtown Contracts NY Marketing Firm For

Municipal Website Video Content

By John Voket

Visitors to the town’s municipal website — newtown-ct.gov — can now see a small icon bearing a theater ticket and the teaser, “Coming Soon.” But it has nothing to do with the town’s famous two-dollar movies.

Clicking on the icon reveals a letter signed by First Selectman Joe Borst on town letterhead, pitching local business owners about a New York marketing and promotion company’s “innovative new media products for businesses.”

“We encourage you to consider supporting the program, and learning more about all that CGI has to offer,” Mr Borst writes.

If this doesn’t sound like typical language in an official municipal correspondence, it isn’t. The content of the form letter was supplied by Rochester-based CGI Communications, and signed by the first selectman, along with a three-year agreement giving the company sole rights to provide streaming video content, sponsored in many cases by businesses and organizations paying the company for the placement.

Some of the “sponsors” icons, which are clustered around a splash-page streaming the localized content, link directly to the sponsoring company’s own website, while others link to their own similar video streaming pages with the sponsor’s own exclusive content — also produced and hosted for a fee by CGI Communications.

The upside to such a partnership for the municipality, and supported by everyone from Newtown’s first selectman to hundreds of municipal clients, and an endorsement by the US Conference of Mayors, is the streaming Internet content is free to the community.

Similar sites for the Town of Fairfield, The City of Meriden and the Borough of Naugatuck show professionally produced 90-second clips featuring welcoming messages from municipal officials or a cheery narrator. The click and view clips showcase architectural, recreational, educational, and other positive aspects of the community — also accompanied by music and upbeat narration.

Image Maker?

Billing itself as the “nation’s premier community image marketer,” CGI Communications, Inc, established itself in upstate New York in 1988. The company’s website states the firm delivers “high-impact marketing and promotion products to community leadership and municipal management” with trademark products including “streaming One-Click web-based videos, V-Mail video emails, or community highlight movies.”

The company claims to have 12,000-plus municipal partners across the country. The click-through options the company markets to local businesses through information often supplied by the municipality or chamber of commerce, include its “eLocalLink” promotional videos.

CGI’s suite of specialized products include targeted video services for chambers of commerce, the real estate industry, and a service called “Mayors.tv.”

While the production value of the local municipal sites and their various sponsor click-through videos appear to be first-rate, in at least one case — Naugatuck — there was such a level of disconnect between the borough and the vendor that the official welcoming message from the mayor features an official who was voted out of office last May.

And depending on the level of local sponsorship, the splash page linking the streaming videos can seem either sparse and underutilized, or take on a NASCAR appearance, with logos and buttons dominating most of the available space.

In a random canvass of advertisers or sponsors from those three participating Connecticut communities, only one, a nursing home in Naugatuck called Beacon Brook, was able to provide any evidence the community-sponsored link brought back referrals.

At the same time, the feedback spoke to another possible shortcoming of the public-private partnership, and the appearance of a municipal endorsement of sponsors. Al Pistorelli, the marketing manager at Beacon Brook, said clients told him they thought his facility was the one recommended by the borough.

“They even said they thought we were the only nursing home in town because the other competing home did not sponsor a link,” Mr Pistorelli said.

No Interactions

Naugatuck’s IT specialist Jim Kallipolites said in the year-and-a-half the CGI portal has been in operation, he has had no interaction with the company, but plans to see what can be done about putting the current mayor into the welcome message. In his tracking of hits to the portal, however, the Naugatuck official said, “I don’t see a lot of activity. People don’t really go here to look at this.”

Michelle Linaine, the coordinating director for a Meriden sponsor, A Child’s Garden preschool, told The Newtown Bee that she has never had a single client say they learned about her business from the municipal link, and that she tracks where every client learns about the school.

A representative of JC Bradley & Sons, an insurance firm sponsoring the Fairfield town video portal, said she does not believe the link “brought tons of business.” And Craig Massaro of Lupe’s Drug Store in Fairfield said while the presentation of his store in the add-on video the company bought from CGI was “a good presentation,” it was hard to judge whether his business benefited.

“I guess having the town’s endorsement is a positive,” he said.

Several other sponsors of the Meriden and Fairfield sites said they thought they could track the click-throughs to their sites, but failed to follow-up with CGI to get the information. Real estate agent Simon Fitzpatrick said his short-term contract was a “shot in the dark.”

“I don’t know that I got any business from it, but after my contract was up, they kept my ad running on the site so I can’t complain really,” he said.

Only Meriden’s Economic Development Director Peggy Brennan was glowingly positive about the CGI partnership.

“CGI did everything they said they would, they coordinated on the municipal content with town departments for the video highlights, they wrapped up the principal shooting over two days and came back to complete follow-up work at no cost to the town that I know of,” she said.

Newtown Economic Development Commissioner Wes Thompson said local officials will be working with the company this week to plan the shooting schedule, which may be on hold until next spring. And he said the contract with Newtown will stipulate that the company will create and support the streaming web videos regardless of how many, or whether CGI gets any, advertising or production revenue from sponsors.