Batavia to highlight local businesses in new video series

The city of Batavia will produce a series of videos highlighting 40 local small businesses.

City council members this week approved the video series, which will help promote Small Business Saturday in November.

"What we're looking to do is basically have the city, Main Street and Chamber conduct a 'Batavia Small Business Saturday' video series for this year," said Anthony Isom, assistant city administrator. "This would require the production to create about a 15- to 30-second video for up to 40 of our small businesses in Batavia."

Isom said that each of the videos will feature an interview with a representative from the business, accompanied by clips of the business itself.

"These videos will premier in the weeks leading up to Small Business Saturday in November of this year," he said. "This will offer an opportunity to promote early so that we can ensure a greater turnout of people will come out to support the businesses."

City Administrator Laura Newman said that the businesses would be free to use the videos for their own purposes.

"This is sort of a replica of a program we did for Restaurant Madness, which was really successful," she said. "We learned some things about how to promote it even more if the individuals were able to utilize that in the future."

Isom said the cost of the video series will not exceed $10,000.

Funds for the project likely will be taken from the remaining Economic Development Grant, Newman said.

Alderman Mark Uher said the city should track how much impact the videos have on promoting Batavia businesses.

"I would like to see that if the businesses are using it, somehow we can continue to track videos across whatever platform they're put on so that we can see, 'Are we actually making a difference,'" he said. "What changes are we doing, and are they spreading or getting more views."

According to meeting documents, the city will be assisted by Both/And Pictures, a Batavia-based video production company.

"Our small businesses have a critical role in being involved directly with our consumers, building relationships with our intergovernmental bodies [and] they're oftentimes more involved in our community in a more intimate way," Isom said.