How Main Street Tupelo, MS Grew Their Holiday Foot Traffic With a $1,000 Main&Me Downtown Shopping Spree Contest

Before the 2012 holiday shopping season, Tupelo Main Street manager Debbie Brangenberg and her intern Jessica Reed of Downtown Tupelo Main Street Association thought up a brilliant way to raise awareness of the holiday shopping offerings in Tupelo's downtown shopping district. They offered $1,000 in *prizes to the three citizens who added the most photos of businesses and products they loved to the Tupelo&Me app. The promotional posters and rules of the contest are published below. By the time the promotion ended, the top three top contestants had added more than one thousand seven hundred photos--that's 1,700 goods and services sold in Tupelo that shoppers became aware of just in time for the holiday shopping season.

You can see the results for yourself at the link here:  http://www.mainandme.com/communities/tupelo-ms-2

$500 first prize winner Christy Morgan's page is here:  http://www.mainandme.com/users/236

The entire contest was conducted over one month, and it caused a burst of foot traffic along Main Street. Everyone from Girl Scouts to Little League teams to church groups to photography clubs seems to have participated in this unique opportunity to have fun while doing something great for their community. It's like Instagram, but for a noble cause. Can Main&Me help you do the same in your city?

To see if your city is on Main&Me yet, or to check out how other cities look on Main&Me,  click here to download the free app.

*Main&Me provided half of the prize money as partner in the Tupelo promotion