Why are art galleries popping up?

As a result of the recession, buildings around the city lost precious ground-floor retail tenants leaving some stretches darkened having a negative impact on neighboring businesses.  In an effort to revive the empty storefronts and attract potential tenants, local economic development groups worked with property owners to donate the spaces for use as temporary art galleries.  Three of TMO’s clients – Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, Fashion Center BID and Greater Jamaica Development Corporation – had coordinated such efforts in their districts. 

The creative use of these vacant spaces was an interesting story to come out of the recession, yet told individually might not make the splash it deserved.  Knowing the media – what has been reported and what reporters are looking for – TMO combined the efforts of these three clients to tell show a citywide trend and pursued a print feature story to be followed by electronic media coverage.

TMO secured a significant placement in The New York Times that included all three clients and positioned them as trend creators in the recession.  TMO then merchandised the print story into several days of continued placements on national and local television, radio and blogs.  Among the placements were NBC Nightly News, Fox 5, WABC-TV and WCBS 880 AM News Radio. Additionally, ARD-TV (Germany) and RTL-TV (Netherlands) ran stories.

The Marino Organization’s strategic media relations expertise helped shine a large light on our clients’ creative solutions during the recession by awarding them tremendous coverage across a spectrum of media outlets.  For our clients, the media coverage generated praise from the community stakeholders and interest from potential tenants.