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The City of Brantford is a municipality in Southern Ontario west of Hamilton. Brantford is famously known to be the “Telephone City” where legendary inventor Alexander Graham Bell made the world’s first successful one-way long distance call. It is also home to several post-secondary campuses including Wilfrid Laurier University, Conestoga College, and Six Nations Polytechnic. Whether it is arts and culture, sports and recreation, or supporting local businesses, the City works each day to help the local economy succeed.
“With the onset of COVID-19, the City of Brantford saw that businesses faced unprecedented circumstances. The conditions, limitations and radical changes severely affected businesses. Leaders, residents and politicians came together to help local businesses navigate these uncharted waters,” says Kevin Dekok, the Business Development Officer at the City of Brantford.
The City was seeking consumer location and spending data to help them gain greater insights surrounding the impact of the pandemic and reached out to Moneris® to help fill the gap.
While working with Moneris, the City looked at multiple data points to help assess the impact. The data helped with the following:
- Re-confirming the City’s prediction of a significant jump in spending from closing to opening throughout the pandemic
- Showing available business opportunities and markets for tourism and promotions
- Helping the City understand opportunities for businesses within Brantford
- Revealing geographic sources of spending outside the community with levels lower than anticipated
- Pointing to consumer spending changes in different business sectors
- Identifying unexpected trends in spending and origin
The City continues to review the data based on different spending sources within Brantford and across the country. In addition, the data is used to target their marketing based on areas that are thriving and areas that have not matched what was originally predicted. As the Brantford economy continues to reopen in steps with the Province of Ontario, this data will help the City anticipate the impacts of future disruptions and support response plans and efforts.
“With the onset of the COVID-19, the City of Brantford saw that businesses faced unprecedented circumstances. The conditions, limitations and radical changes severely affected businesses. Leaders, residents and politicians came together to help local businesses navigate these uncharted waters.”
Kevin Dekok,
Business Development Officer, City of Brantford
The City of Brantford
The City of Brantford is located in Southern Ontario, just west of Hamilton. The City’s Economic Development and Tourism Department has three main divisions: Economic Development, Tourism and the Small Business Resource Centre, each working collaboratively to support the local economy. In an effort to understand the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the City worked with Moneris to get consumer location data. This data helped the City understand the economic impact of the pandemic on local businesses in the City, neighbouring regions and across the country. The data informs ongoing economic recovery support efforts in Brantford.
Background
The City of Brantford is a municipality in Southern Ontario west of Hamilton. The City is famously known to be the “Telephone City” where legendary inventor Alexander Graham Bell made the world’s first successful one-way long distance call. Brantford also is home to several post-secondary campuses including Wilfred Laurier University, Conestoga College, and Six Nations Polytechnic.
Whether it is arts and culture, sports and recreation, or supporting local businesses, the City works each day to help the local economy succeed.
The City of Brantford’s Economic Development Department consists of three main divisions: Economic Development, Tourism, and the Small Business Resource Centre. These teams work in close collaboration to contribute to the economic growth of the
city and help support future success.
The goal of the Department is to foster economic investment and growth in Brantford. To accomplish this, the City has implemented programs and campaigns to attract new opportunities (including but not limited to tourism & entrepreneurism) to the city.
Kevin Dekok is a Business Development Officer at the City of Brantford focusing on investment attraction marketing, managing the website and social media and works with realtors. He is part of a team that specializes in supporting medium and large-sized industrial businesses within the municipality. Dekok and colleagues discussed the need for consumer spending data to help the City understand the actual impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Brantford and its business community.
Challenge
“With the onset of the COVID-19, the City of Brantford sawthat businesses faced unprecedented circumstances. The conditions, limitations and radical changes severely affected businesses. Leaders, residents and politicians came together to help local businesses navigate these uncharted waters,” says Dekok.
The City needed resources to help them understand consumer location and spending patterns and sources in Brantford as part of its ongoing economic recovery plan. The City was seeking consumer location and spending data to help them gain greater insights surrounding the impact of the pandemic and reached out to Moneris® to help fill the gap.
What type of Data was provided?
When the City identified Moneris Data Services as an important source of data, they focused on determining the metrics they needed to measure. Through this analysis, the City needed relevant and in-depth information about the location of consumers as well as spending and business trends revolving around opening and closing of businesses during the pandemic.
What did the Moneris Consumer Spending Data Reveal?
As the City reviewed the data, it provided insights into predictions, revealed surprising information to the City and helped the City better support economic recovery efforts.
The Data
- Re-confirmed the City’s prediction of a significant jump in spending from closing to opening throughout the pandemic
- Showed available business opportunities and markets for tourism and promotions
- Helped the City understand opportunities for businesses within Brantford
- Revealed geographic sources of spending outside the community with levels lower than anticipated
- Pointed to consumer spending changes in different business sectors
- Identified unexpected trends in spending and origin
The fast delivery of data from Moneris helped the City get a more complete picture of local economy activities in near real-time.
Looking Forward
The City continues to break down the data based on different spending sources within Brantford and across the country. The City focuses on creative applications for the data so that they can encourage and advise businesses. In addition, the data is used to target their marketing, based on areas that are thriving and areas that have not kept up to where the City originally predicted. As the Brantford economy continues to reopen in steps with the Province of Ontario, this data will help the City anticipate the impacts of future disruptions and support response plans and efforts.
When the City understands services and establishments in detail because of resources such as consumer location data, it helps efforts to support and develop the local economy. The City can use the consumer spending data to target tourism marketing, identify opportunities for new business development and understand consumer sectoral spending changes. One of the key and promising insights drawn from the data analysis is how consumers support local businesses after enduring multiple lockdowns. The revelation gives the City new insights as they work to support the future growth of the community.
