| Name | Cheryl Millsaps |
|---|---|
| Last Name | Gillenwater |
| Home Address | 31 Ridgerock Drive Suite 100 Signal Mountain, TN 37377 United States |
| Organization Name | Chattanooga Chamber Foundation |
| Describe Your Role In The Organization | President and CEO |
| Organization Address | 811 Broad Street Suite 100 Chattanooga, Tennessee 37402 United States |
| Website | https://www.chattanoogachamber.com |
| Best Phone Number To Reach You | 4236374750 |
| Alternate Phone Number | 4236530937 |
| Email Address | cgillenwater@chattanoogachamber.com |
| Alternate Email Address | cmillsaps@chattanoogachamber.com |
| Please Describe Your Project In Detail | The Chattanooga Story Studio concept grew out of the Chattanooga Chamber Foundation’s mission to promote economic growth. Mainstream media channels keep shrinking, making it ever-more challenging to tell Chattanooga’s story beyond our region – to regional, national and international audiences. This makes it tougher to reach site selectors, investors, jobseekers and potential new clients for our area businesses. Chattanooga lost our Associated Press bureau decades ago and does not have Business Journal coverage – outlets that could export business news to reach key audiences. Mid-sized cities, our competitors, and larger cities, routinely deploy and enjoy these public relations advantages while also paying influencers to promote their stories on social media channels around the world. Relying on mainstream media limits the Chattanooga Chamber’s ability to tell a comprehensive, positive story. Reaching target audiences as part of our economic and talent development work has become ever more important. Cutting through clutter is critical and requires new thinking and innovative approaches. As the Chattanooga Chamber Foundation pursues its strategy of transformational influence, our own research and professional best practices demonstrate that engaging content has the power to influence decision-making more than any other technique. Today’s media landscape resembles a diffuse information network that consumers engage with at different entry points throughout the day. Investing the time to create and curate content is essential to Chattanooga’s ability to activate and engage influencers within that network. Engaging an audience, and keeping them engaged, is achieved through the delivery of original, high-quality, diverse, community-nuanced content. The larger community, in addition to the business community, must share and participate in storytelling to drive memory and sharing – basically word-of-mouth as a best practice to increasing visibility. Visuals are crucial to help make the content skimmable and easy to remember – and research shows that compelling images work as a powerful memory driver. We envision the Chattanooga Story Studio, featuring video and audio studios, as central, community-serving places to rehearse storytelling, practice and refine those skills and talents, thus championing startups, business owners and entrepreneurs. As our storytelling skills as a community thrive and grow, we envision ‘graduating’ people from the studio and on to the next level of commercial success. At this point in the eco-system, graduates would engage with one or more of our local content creation companies. Strategic partnerships will certainly include those interested in producing their own podcasts and video series. Making the studio space available to them is step one of this approach. Step two is featuring the content they produce on the far-reaching networks of the Chattanooga Chamber. This will serve as a force multiplier and establish message authenticity. Essentially, this becomes a podcast network, publishing more stories than we could ever produce on our own and creating greater brand awareness for Chattanooga. |
| Please explain how your project meets the requirements of the American Rescue Plan | COVID-19 dramatically shifted the economic landscape across the country, including in Chattanooga and Hamilton County. More than 18 months later, the region is still feeling many of the effects of the pandemic, including elevated unemployment, business closures and reduced tourism income. Small, female- and minority-owned businesses have been disproportionately impacted during a disaster that devastated many long-lived and well-established businesses. Nationwide, 75% of small businesses experienced negative effects from COVID-19, with accommodations, food and beverage, healthcare, arts and entertainment among those experiencing the greatest impacts. Chattanooga businesses have been similarly impacted, resulting in temporary or permanent business closures, employee layoffs, reduced income and difficulty in hiring replacement workers. When business owners have access to telling their stories, they reach more customers – local, national, global – and they can have a greater economic impact. However, coverage skews toward larger companies and small businesses often lack the resources and know-how to effectively reach potential customers, funders and business influencers. In terms of local reach, small and diverse businesses do not have equitable access to media channels. The diversity gap isn’t just a problem of opportunity, it’s also a problem of connection and inclusivity. We believe mainstream media, and some social media channels, are contributing to the diversity divide. Diverse and inclusive communities are building private communities on social media to more easily share content and engage followers. The Chattanooga Chamber is uniquely positioned to produce content to engage and retain audiences and to lift up the stories of small and medium-sized businesses. One goal is to increase their skills so they can promote their services and products more effectively. Additionally, the Story Studio will enable the Chamber to offer small-scale, affordable services to small and diverse businesses, something most if not all local production companies are not able to do at an affordable cost. This will serve the dual purpose of increasing access and educating these businesses so that they can more effectively engage with local media and production companies in the future, creating a more equitable media environment and ensuring that more diverse stories are told. |
| Where would your project take place? | 811 Broad Street, within the space currently owned and occupied by the Chattanooga Chamber Foundation |
| How much will your project cost in total? | 750000 |
| Do you have any matching funding sources from other local governments, private entities, non-profits, or philanthropic entities for your project? | Yes |
| Please describe the source and list amounts of any other funding. | The Chattanooga Chamber Foundation is prepared to self-fund at least half the cost from existing fund balances and will continue to solicit support from business donors. |
| What portion of the project are you asking the city to fund? | $300,000 |
| If funded, when would your project start? | March 1, 2022 |
| How long would your project take to complete? | 120 days |
| What milestones would you use to measure your project’s progress? | • At least 40% of highlighted businesses will be small, minority, women or veteran owned • Launch a library of training and resource videos that will be useful to small business owners • Engage local communities by featuring each of our Chamber Councils and the businesses that fall within their geographic footprints. Produce at least one feature for each of our 12 councils. • Ensure the studio is used by our strategic partners to deliver a single, cohesive message about the Greater Chattanooga Region. |
| How would you ensure accountability and transparency throughout the project lifecycle? | Collaboration is part of our strategy. Strategic partners, such as the Chattanooga Tourism Company, and others will support our work and use the studio to create their own content promoting Chattanooga. The Chattanooga Story Studio will become a community resource that elevates the stories of all Chattanoogans. The proof will be in the content that comes out of the studio. If we achieve our goals, we will be releasing a steady stream of material supporting and celebrating small and diverse businesses in the community. We are happy to provide progress reports on a schedule the city prefers. |
| If successful, how would your project benefit the community? | Many studies show communities that prospered after a recession or other similar crisis spent that time focused on research, development and innovative ideas. They invested when times were tough. We are that community and now is the time. By reaching more job seekers, investors, decision-makers, employers and site selectors, we will help people thrive and businesses grow, expanding our ability to serve our entire community – especially small and medium-sized businesses and their employees. To increase access and equity, the Chamber will endeavor to ensure that at least 40 percent of the businesses highlighted in our own programming are small or diverse businesses. The Chattanooga Story Studio will tell Chattanooga’s story and expand the Chattanooga brand as a forward-thinking community always seeking to innovate, connect and create; and to attract and retain top talent and investment. Our goals include: 1. Tell the stories of our businesses and the people behind them, Chattanooga residents and their impact on our economy 2. Garner more reach to position our region as the best place for talent, jobs and entrepreneurship 3. Deliver information that helps businesses grow and people thrive 4. Relay relevant information to Chamber stakeholders 5. Create a revenue generating opportunity (advertising and sponsorship opportunities/studio rental/etc.) Chattanooga Story Studio content will advance Chattanooga Climbs strategies, which are an outgrowth of the Velocity2040 community-wide visioning survey where residents expressed dreams and hopes for our future, including prosperity for all. Inclusion and leadership advancement are core components. Storytelling experts and content creators are prepared to take a strategic lead to develop content that is interesting, interactive and developed with the essential goal of driving memory and action. That is where the Chattanooga Story Studio plays the lead role. Tactics • Create memory-driving, easy-to-share stories of how our businesses and smart technologies work and the people who make them work – those who through their success are supporting families and promoting prosperity • Share stories broadly to position our region as the best for talent, jobs and entrepreneurship • Relay relevant information through stories to business influencers and stakeholders |
| How will you attract community buy-in for your project? | The Chattanooga Story Studio will be a resource for both the Chattanooga Chamber, and the community as a whole. It will be a tool that we can use to help tell Chattanooga’s story, both locally and around the globe. The content we produce will educate, inform and entertain while also establishing the Chattanooga brand as a forward-thinking community with an eye toward what’s next. With the engaging content we produce, we will make great strides in helping others in our community join us in telling our Chattanooga Story. The Chattanooga Chamber works with a network of best-in-class, subject-matter experts and excels at convening collaborators to get things done. This includes: • communications volunteers with niche and broad expertise, including startup and smart-tech support organizations such as The Enterprise Center, Co.Lab and the INCubator; • marketing/communications agencies committed to our community, including Izell Marketing, the Sasha Group and The Johnson Group • talent development centers including UTC and Chattanooga State • place-making and attraction experts including River City Co. and Chattanooga Tourism Co. • key employers including EPB, TVA and BlueCross BlueShield of TN • Velocity2040 community vision planning partners such as the Urban League, La Paz and United Way • key organizations who continue their commitment to expanding our economic and talent development goals as established in the Chattanooga Climbs 5-year plan, a plan that included the work of more than 800 people through more than 900 hours of community meetings • Chattanooga Chamber staff, including Sybil Topel, MFA, IOM, Vice President, Marketing and Communications; Jeremy Henderson, Senior Director, Creative Services; and Eric Lisica, Internet Content Manager |
| Is there anything else you would like us to know about your project? |