Ocean City News in Brief

OCEAN CITY — In the
brief this week, the town’s advertising campaign continues to reach new markets
and apparent new heights and the council hopes to tidy up a downtown eyesore.

Resort’s Ad Campaign

“Coming Together Perfectly”

MGH President Andy Malis
said this week that the Rodney the Lifeguard character is hitting full stride
as not only a brand for the resort, but also as a character easily associated
with value.

“This is set to be our
biggest and strongest August schedule for advertising that we’ve ever had in
Ocean City,” said Malis. “Every August we try to make a big push for the end of
the summer season, and this year, with the start of Hotel Week which is the
week of Aug. 22, we feel like we have yet another great added value item in
addition to all the spots on right now promoting free events and Rodney Saves
specials.”

In addition, the new
Rodney television commercials have been airing in the five target markets and
have been creating quite a bit of buzz in the industry and have also connected
well with viewers, according to Malis.

“Our billboard
advertising increased dramatically this year, and we got a lot of prime
locations, and we really tried to make the most of our expansion into the New
Jersey and New York markets, which we feel has been extremely successful just
based on our website traffic as well as our social mediums,” said Malis. “Our
Facebook page alone has just exploded to almost 90,000 fans. I think the next
highest of our competitors is the Jersey Shore, and they have only 40,000.”

Over 9,200 official
Ocean City “apps” have been downloaded this summer, and Malis says that the

Ocean City Insider’s program has been a smashing success on the town’s website www.ococean.com.

“So many things came
together perfectly this year, especially with the whole concept of Rodney as a
brand meaning not only family fun vacations in Ocean City, but also Ocean City
being the place to find good value,” said Malis

The new commercials see
Rodney leaving Ocean City and headed to a suburban neighborhood and to the city
to save people from boredom and quite literally bring them to Ocean City.

The town had borrowed a
tram from the Baltimore Zoo that so closely resembled the Ocean City Boardwalk
Trams, the commercials appear that Rodney has driven from the resort to pick
people up and whisk them away on vacation.

“Other areas aren’t
working all their resources they way we are,” said Malis. “From social media,
to radio, to television, to billboards, we are using all of those as best we
can to promote everything that is going on in town. I think it’s been a good
summer, and I hope it ends as strongly as we think that it can.”

City Wants Changes

To Downtown Eyesore.

Town officials are
allegedly growing weary of the poor condition of the vacated concrete plant
that is clearly visible to anyone who comes across the Route 50 Bridge.

This week, they
discussed what things that they had the power to do, despite the fact that the
owner of the property has no intentions of tearing it down.

On May 11, the City
Council had sent a letter to the owners of the vacated Cropper Concrete Plant
on 1st street stating its unhappiness over the condition of the lot.
Two weeks later, Chief Building Official for the town of Ocean City Kevin Brown
followed with another letter that stated that the property had violated five
town codes and needed to get back into compliance in an allotted time.

McGean said that little
to no work was done until July 15, when another letter was penned from Brown to
the owners of the site, who then started to fix the violations, one by one, and
as of press time, they had all but come into compliance with town code for the
required state of the structure.

“All structures are now
secure except for the second to last bay of the storage warehouse,” said
McGean. “That bay was being secured at the time of the inspection, and in
addition, most of the trash around the property has been cleaned up.”

McGean noted that there
have been discussions between the owners of the vacated plant and the purveyors
of the newly opened de Lazy Lizard restaurant to use the north portion of the
property for overflow parking for restaurant customers.

“We would probably have
to separate the parcel from the rest of the property if you would like to go
that route,” McGean told the council on Tuesday, “but we are doing all we can
to keep the pressure on them to keep the site as aesthetically pleasing as
possible since they have made it pretty clear that they aren’t willing to tear
the structure down.”