The problem with folks who promote Bridgeport is they don’t know how to promote Bridgeport. Who are these people? Mike Moore, president of the Downtown Special Services District and Bob Abbate, the anointed downtown public relations guru. Do they have a clue?
Lots of good stuff coming up in the state’s largest city including NCAA regional women’s basketball championships this weekend and men’s NCAA regional hockey the following weekend at Webster Bank Arena. OIB has received not one news alert, eblast or notification involving either event. Nothing. A site that has thousands of readers received not one alert. Knock knock, anyone home? Please Mike Moore and Bob Abbate, don’t slip and fall on the ice.
Plenty of tickets available. Just in case you want to buy tickets to these events and others such as Sound Tigers hockey, see www.arenaatharboryard.com/.
The short answer Lennie is “NO.” It’s been over 25 years since this fiasco called the Downtown Special Services District was formed. The only services they performed were quite similar to the administration of the City of Bridgeport. NOTHING!!! All they have done is tax the downtown businesses, kept their salaries (Keeley earned about $50K for doing nothing), and allowed Bridgeport’s once-vital downtown to descend into the empty place it now is.
There is no reason to go downtown except to go to court.
Bob,
Have you been downtown lately?
I was covering a preview of the upcoming Westport Restaurant Week last night and had a long conversation with restaurant marketing guru Linda Kavanaugh.
Linda knows I’m a Bridgeport guy and spoke to me at length about her frustration with trying to work with Mike Moore and the DSSD to establish a similar event in Bridgeport. She found him totally uncooperative. In the end, she’s just not going to involve the DSSD and market the event on her own.
By the way, the Bridgeport Banner has not received any press releases about the NCAA events either. No surprise there.
Don Eversley sent two emails to City employees yesterday. The first advertised downtown pole dancing classes and the second gave some helpful advice on where to go for happy hour on a Tuesday night.
DSSD is a joke. What have they really done for Bridgeport? That’s easy, NOTHING!!! For more than 5 years they have been talking about putting up parking signs so visitors could find parking. To this day they are still talking about it.
Eversley cannot do anything without the approval of Andy Nunn. We are paying this person $100K to tell us where pole dancing classes are being held. Just on that email alone I would have fired this guy. He has done zero in the 4 years he has been here. Why is he still here?
I agree, Lennie. The city in general has some bad marketing efforts as do many of the venues themselves. And I consider myself an expert having publicized Bridgeport with my volunteer web site Bridgeport in the Know for the past 5 years and my various Bridgeport Facebook pages. I wish someone would hire unemployed me! I love this city! Anyway, I think in many ways, press releases are a thing of the past which I don’t necessarily agree with. The Special Services District does have a web site InfoBridgeport and an active Facebook page and Twitter that publicize city events every day.
I don’t know, Bepo. I don’t think press releases are a thing of the past at all. But I DO think they have to be mixed with new media.