Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council committee gives go ahead for £450,000 Christmas marketing campaign

Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council’s (LCCC) regeneration committee has agreed to begin a public procurement for a communications company to deliver its seasonal campaign from 2025-28.

A new independent research report in chambers has suggested advertised council Christmas activities encourage an uplift in visitor spend by approximately 30%.

A council officer said: “Due to the lead in time required to procure a new three year service contract to be in place to allow the early planning of Christmas 2025, which commences pre-summer 2025, it is proposed that this work is tendered in Autumn 2024.

“This should include consideration of the need to refresh the integrated marketing branding for the 2025-2028 period and beyond.

“The financial implications will be up to a maximum £450,000 over three years. A total average annual cost of up to £150K from the tourism budget estimates.”

The officer told the chamber that radio advertising could become more of a focus due to “expensive TV advertising”.

A council receipt provided to members for Christmas 2023, has shown £23k of ratepayers’ money was spent on a 30 second TV ad shown on UTV, ITV X and Sky over a two-three week period with over 1.6m “impressions”.

A 20 second advert on Cool FM and Downtown radio across a two week period cost £4.5k with almost 620k people “reached”.

Downshire East councillor Uel Mackin asked: “What are we going to be marketing? “There is about 70-80% of people coming to Lisburn because they have heard about what we have early. They come because they want to see something different.”