How Downtown Tempe Cumulatively Drove Over $8MM in Economic Impact in Just Six Days

The Mission

In 2024 the Downtown Tempe Authority launched a new signature event called Tempe Blooms. The two-day, first-of-its-kind floral event in Arizona was grant-funded and served as a logistical and operational pilot, which proved so successful in year-one, that sponsors were clamoring to jump on board before the 2025 event.

The Approach

Bright Brothers assisted the Downtown Tempe Authority in many aspects of the event from its inception. We researched and developed a competitive analysis and positioning paper for the client in advance of the inaugural event. We developed the event’s visual identity, its marketing plan and budget allocations, interfaced strategically with the org’s community and business liaison to work with district ratepayers to develop custom floral-inspired specials, and promoted an attendee intercept survey used to understand community sentiment, motivations, likes and dislikes, as well as understand average party size — as well as self-declared spends used to calculate the event’s economic impact.

The Result

Tempe Blooms has grown incrementally year-over-year, and the cumulative impacts from its first three years are beyond impressive. Securing a signature sponsorship with the largest wholesale flower importer in Arizona has proven enormously successful for the sponsor, its wholesale and retail clients, as well as the Downtown Tempe community.

Each year a cleverly-deployed communications campaign supports awareness and attendance for the signature event, including merchant marketing kits, streetscape signage and massive gains for owned channels including increases to newsletter sign-ups, fans, followers and collabs on social channels and of course, website traffic. Attendance, foot traffic and ped counts are confirmed through Placer.ai as well as data from Destinations International. 

The cumulative results from the past three years underscore the necessity of a metered and long-term growth plan for events to make them stick, and provide impact. Take a peep at these data points to better see how Downtown Tempe has transformed a grant-funded pilot event into a signature event that drives dollars, foot traffic and goodwill back into the community:

YEAR     ATTENDEES              ECONOMIC IMPACT

2024      88,400                       $2.65MM

2025      82,200+                     $2.46MM

2026      99,500                       $2.98MM

CUME    270,100+                    $8.10MM

Downtown Tempe now boasts a new signature event that rivals its previous best foot traffic-generating semi-annual events, subsequently wining four distinct awards for Tempe Blooms, including an International Downtown Association “Award of Excellence”, and an IFEA “Pinnacle Award”. The two-day event each January has now driven over 270k in foot traffic to the downtown and directed over $8.1MM in economic impacts directly back to the bars, restaurants, shops and hoteliers who make up the district’s ratepayers.

📸: Downtown Tempe Authority