Strategy

San Francisco has long been synonymous with opportunity, innovation, and, above all, acceptance and tolerance. The city is home to dreamers, thinkers, builders, creators, inventors, makers, and doers. The disruption triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with real and perceived challenges facing the city, have advanced a narrative that questions our vibrancy, beauty, innovative capacity, and creative culture, and even our commitment to equity. To continue fostering a vibrant economy that also embodies our beliefs and values, we must reclaim our narrative by investing in the elements that have made San Francisco great while addressing our greatest challenges. As we build toward the future, we will proactively promote our vision, our strengths, and our successes as one of the most beautiful, welcoming, inclusive, and forward-looking places in the world.

 

Initiatives

• Promote a national visitor attraction campaign in targeted markets to remind potential visitors of San Francisco’s unique allure.  

• Launch the Heart of SF social media campaign to amplify a cohesive narrative around Downtown’s evolving identity. 

• Inspire entrepreneurs and innovators to locate Downtown through the Make Your Future San Francisco campaign. 

• Support and inspire private campaigns that highlight the best of San Francisco.

 

Visitor attraction campaign

The Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) has partnered with SF Travel to deliver a national marketing campaign aimed at increasing leisure and business travel to San Francisco by reminding potential visitors of our one-of-a-kind attractions, cultural experiences, and natural beauty to accelerate recovery of the city’s $8.4 billion tourism industry. The Always San Francisco Campaign launched in May 2023 and will run on streaming, social, and traditional media platforms in selected US markets through the fall.

Heart of SF social media campaign

OEWD has partnered with Advance SF on a social media campaign designed to establish a compelling vision and promote one cohesive narrative of San Francisco’s evolving Downtown. The Heart of SF campaign launched in February 2023 and is amplifying and supplementing user-generated content about gatherings and cultural happenings and highlight progress towards making Downtown a more inviting, easier to access, and appealing place.

Make Your Future San Francisco campaign

In March 2023, the Office of Economic and Workforce Development partnered with a coalition of business groups including the Bay Area Council, Advance SF, and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce to launch the Make Your Future San Francisco campaign. The campaign is comprised of a website and promotional video featuring the voice of SF Giants announcer Jon Miller designed to invite entrepreneurs, thinkers, and investors to imagine their futures in San Francisco. The campaign launched in conjunction with the American Cities Business Journal’s The Future of Cities 3.0 virtual forum that featured renowned urbanist Richard Florida and was broadcast to a national audience.

Other campaign efforts underway

Beyond individual campaigns focused on specific audiences or content, the City recognizes that it must put forward a proactive narrative that reaffirms San Francisco as a premiere U.S. city offering unparalleled opportunities, matchless quality of life, and serving as a beacon of innovation and creativity – a city that embraces equity and inclusion.  

• In November 2023, global leaders from around the world will arrive in San Francisco to participate in the 30th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Summit, and the City is spearheading both a publicity campaign as well as local interactive events to ensure the best of San Francisco is on display, and reported back through international media

• A grassroots social media campaign called We Love SF was recently launched to highlight the best of San Francisco as seen by San Franciscans

• Several business leaders, working with Advance SF and a number of nationally renowned marketing experts, are developing a comprehensive media campaign to both shift the narrative and activate the public with a citywide effort to bolster civic pride, which will launch in fall 2023

 

See other economic recovery strategies