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. 

The City has begun to advance a series of initiatives and will launch additional programs that support this strategy: 

• 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. 

• Develop a San Francisco recovery campaign to put forward overall positive stories of San Francisco. 

 

Initiatives

 

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Visitor attraction campaign

Tourism is a cornerstone of the San Francisco economy, generating over $8.4 billion in economic impact in 2019. While the number of visitors has been growing steadily since 2020, overall visits and tourist spending remain below pre-pandemic levels. 

• The Office of Economic and Workforce Development has partnered with SF Travel to deliver a national marketing campaign aimed at increasing leisure and business travel to San Francisco through original creative content, strategic partnerships in the arts, travel, and hospitality industries, and through a multi-channel promotion campaign in targeted domestic markets that have been identified as having the greatest potential to attract new conventions, general businesses, and leisure travelers. The goal of the campaign will be to attract and remind potential visitors of the City’s one-of-a-kind attractions, cultural experiences, and natural beauty to accelerate tourism recovery. 

• The Always San Francisco Campaign launched in May 2023 and will run on streaming, social, and traditional media platforms through the fall.

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Heart of SF social media campaign

Downtown has long been known primarily as a place to go to the office. Expanding that image and reputation to include the full range of activities and possibilities that the area has to offer will require focused and proactive messaging. 

• The Office of Economic and Workforce Development has commissioned 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 will amplify and supplement user-generated content about gatherings and cultural happenings and highlight progress towards making Downtown a more inviting, easier to access, and appealing place.

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Make Your Future San Francisco campaign

San Francisco has been the launching pad for countless new companies, inventions, and ideas since its founding. Our highly-skilled workforce, hallmark social and cultural openness, unparalleled natural beauty and quality of life, and position as a regional and global transportation hub offer the same opportunity to the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators. 

• 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. 

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San Francisco recovery marketing campaign

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.

• The Office of Economic and Workforce Development will partner with the business community to identify resources and retain a marketing firm that can develop and execute a national campaign that would strategically deploy a multi-pronged approach including a combination of images, graphics, social media, paid and earned media, validators, and additional tactics to affect the positive perception of San Francisco nationally.

• The campaign concept and resources will be developed over 2023.

 

See other economic recovery strategies

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