Site sponser Blue Cross & Blue Shield featured the much loved Bresler’s Klezmer Hot Shots.
Of all the events held to promote the Arcade, First Night Providence is by far the biggest success in attracting attention. “I expected 1,000 people in 1998,” the first year the Arcade was a site sponsor, “and we got 5,000 to 6,000,” says the still incredulous property manager, David Roser. “This year we had more than 8,000.”
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What Roser discovered two years ago, the U.S. Postal Service learned in 1989 when its downtown post office became an official site of the annual New Year’s eve festival. “We have a station right in the middle of the First Night action, so we thought, ‘why not?’ It was a good chance to get good, positive PR,” says Pamela Thurber, customer relations coordinator for the Providence District.
The Post Office and Arcade, along with companies such as Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, are somewhat different from many of the festival’s other venues in that, as site sponsors, they not only donate their spaces but may also plan and fund their programming, do their own decorations, signage and promotions, and become mini-destinations in their own right.
Roser, for example, can offer gallery space to Center City Artisans, an educational arts collaborative, and suitable surroundings for blues, jazz and dance bands. On top of that, he provides First Night revelers with food from 10 restaurants and activities that engage several of his retailers. The Gamekeeper shop, for instance, opened games and set up tables for people to play them. Another mall tenant, Massage on the Run, offered quick massages. “All of our tenants made out very well,” says Roser. “It’s good exposure for them. And this year their proceeds were up $700 to $800 over last year.”
The Post Office develops its programming around a different theme each year, tying it to a special stamp cancellation. “We select a stamp and then develop our theme, which we carry out in everything from our decorating to our choice of band to our party favors,” says Thurber. One year the theme was movies, another year it was Mardi Gras (everyone got beads). In 1999 it was “A Haunting Evening” based on an Alfred Hitchcock stamp. (The party favors? Eyeball gum balls.) Stamp collectors also love the theme idea, Thurber says, because they can get a First Night cancellation stamp, and a party to go with it.
Besides the positive publicity, there is another, somewhat less obvious benefit to this kind of sponsorship, says Thurber, and that’s giving postal employees from all over the district a volunteer opportunity that’s creative and festive. “It’s fun for employees. It gets them involved in the city. It’s a morale booster.”
Just as First Night Providence has become a beloved Rhode Island tradition, so too does it offer businesses the opportunity to be part of the heritage. Supporting the festival, says Thurber, “has become a tradition that we don’t want to give up because it involves so many people.”
The site sponsors also say that their support of First Night is motivated by wanting people to feel safe and comfortable about coming to the capital city and to show them what Providence has to offer culturally and commercially. “It’s exposure. A lot of people who try First Night for the first time have not been downtown for many years,” says Roser. “It opens the doors to what’s here and welcomes them back. It also serves a good purpose. It’s drug- and alcohol-free, it’s geared to any age and it’s something that fits everyone’s lifestyle.”
