Pike Place Market, Washington’s largest tourist draw and the oldest market on the West Coast is expanding. The Seattle-area community has a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to shape this iconic market into something even greater than it is today. This panel will discuss the process of landing on a compelling campaign idea, infusing that into a responsive digital experience, and launching a campaign to complete the 40-year vision of the historic district and connecting the Market to Seattle’s waterfront.
To understand Pike Place Market, you must know something of its history.
The Market has always been very popular. This photo is probably from the summer of 1907, the Market’s first year.
It started August 17, 1907, when the City of Seattle gave farmers permission to park their trucks in the middle of a little L-shaped street at the edge of downtown and sell directly to the public.
This all happened because of a dispute of the price of onions.
Between 1906 and 1907, the price of onions skyrocketed from 10 cents a pound to a dollar, causing public outrage.
Investigations showed that farmers were not getting any more for their produce, so it was all going to produce warehouses and other middle men.
The City interceded to create a place where the public could buy directly from the farmers, cutting out the middle men, lowering prices and giving more profit directly to the farmers.
The surrounding neighborhood grew quickly in response to the Market’s success.
Permanent businesses go in to cater to Market shoppers: Butchers, Poulterers, Dairies, etc.
Also, fun attractions for folks making a day out of a trip to the Market: Cheap restaurants, movie theaters, side shows, etc.
Things also went in to cater to the farmers and laborers: Cheap hotels for farmers who needed to stay over, saloons, speakeasies and even brothels.
Through the 20’s, 30’s and early 40’s, the Market was at the center of a bustling neighborhood.
This was a time when supermarkets were non-existent, and refrigerators at home were uncommon.
Lots of people relied on the Market as a daily source of fresh food.
By the early 60’s, the Market’s buildings were in serious disrepair.
By 1963, the Pike Place Market had deteriorated and was partially abandoned.
An urban renewal project, supported by the City Council and financed with federal funds, was proposed to demolish most of the neighborhood and build a new neighborhood with high-rise apartments and condos, upscale retail and terraced parks that would connect down to the waterfront.
A few public spirited citizens stood up to this plan.
Architect and professor Victor Steinbrueck led the creation of Friends of the Market to try to save the place
Steinbrueck published Market Sketchbook, a selection of his drawings and commentary.
After a cantankerous fight, the question was eventually put to the voters in 1971, as proposition 1.
Vote passes, saving the Market, creating a historical district to preserve it, and channeling the federal money into a project to buy up the property aroud the Market and rehabilitate it.
The Market Historic District employs over 2,000 people and generates over $100 million in gross sales annually
About Pike Place Market Foundation:
Vision:
The Pike Place Market Foundation is the heart of the Market. By helping our low-income neighbors who work, learn and live in and around the Market, the Foundation helps the Market we love remain a thriving, caring community.
Established in 1982, The Market Foundation is a non-profit organization that supports housing and services for our low-income neighbors by fundraising, advocacy and community building. Over the past 31 years, The Market Foundation has contributed to a neighborhood model that allows a diverse community to live and thrive here at Pike Place Market.
Rachel the Piggy bank – raises more than $22k a year
This blend of commerce and caring is what makes the Market a truly unique community.
Today the convergence of several projects on Seattle’s waterfront is creating the opportunity for development of a long underutilized site in the historic district.
The Pike Place MarketFront will become the central connection between downtown Seattle and the new central waterfront park.
The Pike Place Market Waterfront Entrance to is our opportunity
to expand upon the heart of what The Market Foundation does: creating and sustaining a caring community for our low-income neighbors who lives, work and learn in and around the Market.
View from the Waterside
Our Vision: to create a thriving, caring community for our low-income neighbors who live, work and learn in and around the Market.
Our Goal
To better address the emergent and growing needs of our Market community. We want to inspire Seattle’s social service network to be innovative and create sustainable ideas that will make the most impact here at Pike Place Market.
Our Opportunity
The Waterfront Entrance to Pike Place Market is our opportunity to expand upon the heart of what The Market Foundation does in our community. The Market continues to be a model for how a diverse neighborhood - a mixed income community with a broad range of uses and residents - can stimulate a dynamic, economically viable downtown. A campaign for this new project not only allows the Market to increase its economic impact, it also improves our community for local residents, businesses, farmers, artists and neighbors alike.
The Pike Place Market Waterfront Entrance to is our opportunity
to expand upon the heart of what The Market Foundation does: creating and sustaining a caring community for our low-income neighbors who lives, work and learn in and around the Market.
View from the Waterside
Our Vision: to create a thriving, caring community for our low-income neighbors who live, work and learn in and around the Market.
Our Goal
To better address the emergent and growing needs of our Market community. We want to inspire Seattle’s social service network to be innovative and create sustainable ideas that will make the most impact here at Pike Place Market.
Our Opportunity
The Waterfront Entrance to Pike Place Market is our opportunity to expand upon the heart of what The Market Foundation does in our community. The Market continues to be a model for how a diverse neighborhood - a mixed income community with a broad range of uses and residents - can stimulate a dynamic, economically viable downtown. A campaign for this new project not only allows the Market to increase its economic impact, it also improves our community for local residents, businesses, farmers, artists and neighbors alike.
-Cal, co-founder and CEO of Wexley. We’re a little advertising agency, 35 people, we’re 10 years in.
-We consider ourselves a Fan factory, more on that later.
Let me lay out my agenda for this conversation a bit. I am going to focus on the kind of thinking that makes us successful and what I ask of our people. But for the first ten minutes, bare with me. The last thing this is going to be is an agency creds presentation. But I want to spend 10 minutes showing you what our work looks like so you will then decide to care if the next 20 minutes are going to be any value, or if you just want to fake going to the restroom. I’m also going to try to get through my section early, and am hoping we can sort of open it up to questions as I like for these things to be more of a conversation. I really want to show just a tiny bit of Wexley history and philosophy.
Let me talk for a second about what the company is founded on, and hope from it you see how we put our thinking to work.
We cultivate and ignite consumer’s love for brands. We’re an advertising agency that creates joy and laughter for engaged fanatics who deliver value – in the real world and on the wide web one. We make hearts race. We make voices scream.
We make it rain dead presidents.
Blind loyalist is someone who always buys your and doesn’t know why. He’s easy to switch. He’s been buying Crest all this time.
A prospect is someone who doesn’t know much about you, if anything, and may or may not care. She hasn’t been buying anything.
An enthusiast is someone who is excited about you but doesn’t give you any transactional value. He wears your logo on a shirt he bought in 1987.
For us, and for you, fans are the critical element in the future of your business. So we need to know how to create them.
The Pike Place Market Waterfront Entrance to is our opportunity
to expand upon the heart of what The Market Foundation does: creating and sustaining a caring community for our low-income neighbors who lives, work and learn in and around the Market.
View from the Waterside
Our Vision: to create a thriving, caring community for our low-income neighbors who live, work and learn in and around the Market.
Our Goal
To better address the emergent and growing needs of our Market community. We want to inspire Seattle’s social service network to be innovative and create sustainable ideas that will make the most impact here at Pike Place Market.
Our Opportunity
The Waterfront Entrance to Pike Place Market is our opportunity to expand upon the heart of what The Market Foundation does in our community. The Market continues to be a model for how a diverse neighborhood - a mixed income community with a broad range of uses and residents - can stimulate a dynamic, economically viable downtown. A campaign for this new project not only allows the Market to increase its economic impact, it also improves our community for local residents, businesses, farmers, artists and neighbors alike.
This is the kind of gnarly complicated project we like to work with as it flexes all our muscles as designers and technologists
-We had to build a transactional web platform (blackbaud)
-That could be easily updated by the market foundation (wordpress)
-Oh, and a lot of the campaign-specific information we wanted to share was in a deeper database called (razer’s edge) that we couldn’t access from the web
-So we had to build a proprietary database (proprietary database) under wordpress to track and surface donations.
-On top of that we had to design an experience that would sit on top of the traditional pike place brand and the campaign Pike Up! Brand that Wexley designed.
-Oh and then we had to skin it responsively so it would scale up and down (responsive)
seattle
Real, authentic, alive
A clock
Bavarian Meats with blue and white checked table cloths
It’s original site is where the new Marketfront will be built
Oh Joy. The Hardy Boys.
There are at least 3 book stores in the market and perhaps others I haven’t found
That’s more than the rest of seattle
Seigfried and Roy. Roy’s on the right. Tiger selfie.