4 Insta-Worthy Places in Charleston

There are some places that are so iconic that they warrant a picture, even if it’s the same one everyone else is taking. People take their own anyway because these places mean something to them. Some are destinations all on their own, like the Eiffel Tower or even Rainbow Row. All of them are part of something bigger; manifestations that sum up and perfectly represent the experience someone is having wherever they are. 

What does this have to do with your business?

Well, this idea can be leveraged by any business that has a physical place that serves customers.

In an age where everyone takes pictures of everything, we can use this little insight to help people along. We already know that of all the ways a brand can build trust with its customers, a referral from a friend or word of mouth marketing is still the quickest way. Making it easier for them to share their experience at your business means more exposure for you. 

Of course there are many ways to make it easier for customers to share their experiences, but how do you go about creating your version of an Insta-worthy place? Your very own Eiffel Tower? 

Whether intentionally or not, lots of places around town already have.

Firefly Distillery’s “Big Red” Firefly Truck

Can’t go to Firefly without getting a picture with their truck! Strategically placed right at the Distillery’s entrance, Big Red welcomes guests as soon as they walk in. The truck became such a fixture at the original distillery on Wadmalaw that it made the trip to North Charleston. Not only is it a perfectly restored Classic Ford truck with an eye-catching red paint job, but doesn’t it just make you think of all of those moonshiners runnin’ shine in the backwoods during Prohibition? 

Lewis Barbecue’s “All Hail the King” Mural

As masters of Texas-style barbecue and beef brisket, this mural immediately tells you what Lewis is all about. A giant bull’s head, complete with horns and a crown, is pictured between “All Hail” and “The King”, taking up the entire side of a building. It’s one of the first things you see pulling up to their spot and something about its design makes it clear that you’ve arrived and going to get exactly what you were looking for. One of my favorites!

Uptown Social’s “Social Butterfly” Mural

You’ve seen the Nashville WhatLiftsYou Wings mural haven’t you? It’s become so popular it’s listed as a tourist attraction. Well, Uptown Social’s got their own version of a wings mural and half the pictures on Instagram taken there is of this mural or has it in the background. Two beautifully painted wings are separated by just the right amount of space for someone to stand between them and be transformed into a butterfly.  Even Bernie stopped by for a pic. For a bar and restaurant that was created to help social butterflies mingle, this Social Butterfly mural encourages interaction and is the perfect addition to their space. Basic? Maybe. Does it work? Absolutely.

Viva Tacos and Tequila’s VIVA Letters

Viva just opened at the end of November, but this installation of the “VIVA” letters is already becoming a favorite place for guests to pose. Four brightly colored and patterned letters sit right under the clock tower at Central Island Square on Daniel Island, just a few steps away from the restaurant’s front doors. They’re loud and colorful and the word they spell out translates to “live” or “long live!”, often used as part of a cheer or rally cry. “VIVA” is visible from the street and a great introduction to the vibrancy both in atmosphere and food you’ll experience once you get inside. 

These four examples have some things in common:

• They are all immediately noticeable.

• Their placement allows for people to go up and take a closer look (to take a photo with it, of course!). They invite attention and interaction.

• They surprise and delight. (“Cool, look at that!”)

• They are all relevant to their brands.

What can you create that checks off everything on this list?

It doesn’t have to be a mural or a car. In fact, it’s most likely not going to be a car unless you’re a car brand or Firefly. Maybe it’s a sign, a chalkboard, a flower wall, the way you display your merchandise, or something interesting you do with lighting fixtures.

So many possibilities!

Shop Charleston Restaurants

While looking for ways to support our local restaurants beyond going out to eat or ordering takeout, we noticed a handful of them sell some great products on their websites that we think need to be shared.

Head to our new “Shop Charleston Restaurants” page to see some of our favorite things.

A Note

During these difficult times every bit helps and even though many of us have upped our delivery game and purchased gift cards, there are still hidden costs associated with those. Third party delivery services charge a steep price and gift cards don’t always reconcile until they’re redeemed. So while we should all continue doing whatever we can to support local restaurants, we thought we’d compile some great finds you can purchase directly from some of our favorite places.

**Disclaimer: most of these are not Creativ clients —this is not sponsored, ha!

We started Creativ to help our community communicate with their guests and customers, and this is just an extension of that. We have resources we thought we’d put to use in hopes that this could send more people to the merch shops of some of our favorite Charleston restaurants.

If we’re missing something you love from our local restaurants and it can be ordered online, shoot us an email at hello@creativsocial.com and we’ll add it!

5 Marketing Lessons Learned in 2020

Congratulations! You beat level 2020 and made it to the first day of a new year.

I hope this finds you invigorated and feeling positive about what lies ahead, if not a little hungover. 

While you might still be thinking about all the ways to improve your business this year, we thought we’d share some lessons we learned in 2020.

Working with clients with several kinds of businesses, it’s exciting for us to see how many have embraced these five things without even thinking about them. By articulating them here, we hope to offer you a perspective that will help you continue to act with them in mind in the year ahead. 

5 Marketing Lessons Learned in 2020

LEAD WITH EMPATHY

Every one of us has somehow been affected by the pandemic. Whether it’s that we’re more isolated, juggling new responsibilities that come with the general uncertainty that surrounds us, that we’ve experienced loss or simply that we’re under more stress, we’ve all been through the wringer. Maybe because we all are experiencing this collectively, acknowledging this has become commonplace in small business marketing. 

At Creativ, we’ve always implored that empathy is critical to successful marketing. It’s not just about selling, but communicating in ways that evoke feelings that then lead to transactions. Empathy in marketing extends beyond your messaging.

Last year, we got to see that firsthand. Empathy showed up when restaurants donated meals to hospital staff but also had staff meals donated to them while partial shutdowns meant they could only do takeout orders. Empathy showed up when local banks started using their social accounts to help clarify how the PPP loan was supposed to work.

Without noticing it, businesses who always knew that delivering value creates loyal customers, but still couldn’t see how that works without selling to them, did so without even thinking about it. 

Smart marketing is putting yourself into your customers’ shoes, doing the research to know their needs and wants and how they’re feeling, and delivering on those points to solve their problems.

Empathy leads to value leads to trust leads to sales. Keep it up! 

INVEST IN CHANNELS TO COMMUNICATE IN A TIMELY MANNER

Things moved fast in 2020 (but also SO painfully slow). It was hard to keep up, but businesses that had already invested in building a foundation on social media and growing an email list had a leg up. We had a lot of help from Google and Facebook when they quickly created tools to help businesses let customers know about hours, online ordering and new services. Those who used them made it easier for people to know the latest. 

Little things like this alleviate frustrations on the customers’ end and that matters. This should be the norm. If someone has to send a DM, call the restaurant or send an email to the front office with questions that are general, there’s potential to do better. Information like hours, menus, services, and general changes in how you’re operating your business should all be available for customers to find before they reach out directly. 

Of course not everyone’s going to look for it, but you put less stress on your team when they’re not wasting time answering the same questions over and over when you could’ve just updated your website or posted on Instagram.

Keep using these channels to communicate consistently. 

FOSTER YOUR COMMUNITY

In a world where we’re all bombarded with millions of messages a day, where anything we want to buy or learn is available from our smartphones, the most valuable currency to a business is not money, but trust.

Money from a customer that doesn’t trust you doesn’t last. Nurturing that trust starts with how you interact with the community you build around your business. 

We don’t mean community as in how we throw around that word today (your social following), but the community of people without whom you couldn’t run your business: your customers, vendors, partners, employees, in addition to your social following.

Show up for them and interact with them consistently. Seek out and listen to their input. Be transparent and open with them about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Shared experience and openness create trust, too. 

Especially for local businesses, people buy from and support people more than they buy what you’re selling. It’s unlikely they can’t get the same thing somewhere else... with all due respect.

Invest time into nurturing your relationships and facilitating trust and your community will show up for you when you need them to. 

E-COMMERCE ISN'T GOING ANYWHERE

We work with mostly local, brick and mortar companies that do business in person. Part of what we do is enhancing their customer experience inside their four walls, but we also work to extend that experience online consistently.

As shutdowns limited people’s ability to frequent these places as often, an opportunity arose to find alternative ways to make some money. 

Many got creative in finding ways to push transactions digitally, while others realized that simply setting themselves up for e-commerce opportunities was becoming a necessity. Things like making gift cards or a new branded t-shirt available to purchase on a website, or setting up the infrastructure for online ordering to facilitate the takeout process seem like small things, but they’re important steps to take now.

We know the future is digital, even for businesses that operate at physical locations. The pandemic helped a lot of people realize this.

If you took steps to bridge the gap between your in person and online transactions, good for you. Keep going! 

ADAPT TO FLOURISH
“To Flourish Requires A New Kind of Openness”

Bear with me if you’ve heard me talk about this before, but there’s an article I read in January 2012 that means a lot to me. It left a big impression and changed how I think about what it takes for a business to thrive. I will spare you a full recap, but it speaks to the massive implications that the internet and a smaller, more connected world have on how we communicate, how we do business, and what skills are necessary to survive in this moment of  time we find ourselves in.

We all know that change is inevitable. We’re aware that the speed of technology and disruption have implications on our business. Still, it's human nature to resist things that change our ways. That’s especially true if it means we have to develop a proclivity to take more risks. 

Last year put us in a situation where many of us didn’t have the luxury to think too long and hard about the what ifs. Changes happened fast and we had to adjust quickly.

So, as the fine folks in that article already knew 9 years ago, we saw how being able to adapt isn’t just a nice skill to have, but totally necessary today. We saw so many pivoting their business model last year, changing up how they worked and what they offered and doing it quickly while still staying relevant to their brand.

These businesses flourished. 

We saw meal kits being prepared with video tutorials on how to cook restaurant meals at home. Our favorite local distillery temporarily changed their product to accommodate a shortage of hand sanitizer. Movie theaters teamed up with local parks and parking lots to offer drive in movies. A live music venue and the record shop next door recorded live performances with local musicians. They then pressed these sessions to vinyl and sold them, with proceeds benefiting musicians whose gigs all but dried up. 

Necessity is the mother of invention, indeed.

Maybe it’s not so bad that we didn’t have much time to think last year. We had to act. Acting quickly kept us in the game. I’m still hoping that 2021 cuts us some slack, but there was so much innovation in Charleston this year and that was exciting to see.

Maybe we needed a little shaking up to show us how agile our businesses can be. Maybe now that we know that approaching chaos head first just means we’ll get to the good things on the other side of it a little bit faster, all this change isn’t as scary.

Maybe we should stop thinking so hard about everything we learned last year and just get on with it. If you've made it this far down this post, I'm guessing you agree.

Here's to your best year yet!