Monday January 23, 2012
Dear Friend:
Last week I sent you an invitation to participate in a "Conversation about Collaborative Marketing."
Since I have thus far heard from only about half of the invitees and I am sure all have questions about what this is about, I am now writing to explain and encourage your participation or, if you are not available, someone from your organization.
Background
During my four years on City Council and the three that I have been Mayor most of my colleagues on Council felt that City and County Accommodation Taxes have not maximized the potential of taxpayer dollars invested in marketing our home town. It appears to us that there are four key issues:
We seem to be funding the same organizations year after year without any growing their independence, as a result of their efforts, thereby allowing funding that could go to other needy organizations; and
2. We often grant much less than an organization has requested so we wonder if we are really helping or simply providing a poorly leveraged subsidy; and
3. While organizations fulfill their legal commitment to account for the dollars they spend, we are often in the dark as to what impact they are having on the big picture which is marketing a place and not just events that happen to take place in our city; and
4. There is a lack of appropriate collaboration on our collective message so that regardless of the organization investing the dollars we are falling short of communicating the place we are offering in deference to events and/or small parts of the whole.
As many realize, for years the Beaufort retail, lodging and real estate markets benefitted from the approximately $5 million a year invested in national marketing campaigns by Dataw, Fripp, Callawassie, Spring and Brays Island developers among others. But, as those communities neared completion and the developers pulled out, the marketing dollars dried up. Since then, we have been largely dependent upon our Designated Marketing Organization which has limited funds, modest ATAX allocations and marketing paid through independent efforts by the private sector and nonprofit organizations.
I am a firm believer that (a) we do not have a comprehensive vision of Beaufort as a place with all of its incremental parts which makes the whole lesser than the sum of its parts; (b) that by shared branding, collaborative marketing and advertising we can package the whole while promoting our respective interests; and (c) there are a lot of businesses and cultural and recreational entities which have never been invited to the table to become part of the whole both in branding and collaborative marketing.
Accordingly, after the completion of this year's ATAX granting process which we believe was as inadequate as years past, City Council agreed that we had to look for ways to do things differently.
For this reason, we are inviting you and others to the table to discuss how we might stretch dollars and expand message through even stronger collaboration.
As you likely know over the past three years, the City has looked for and found new ways of doing business more efficiently while accomplishing a higher level of service with fewer dollars.
We believe it is our obligation to explore ways of doing this with marketing dollars which, while designated to outside groups, are still the responsibility of the City.
The Goal of the Workshop
The roughly four hour session will begin with a presentation by the assistant manager of Greenville, SC. There is no doubt that the City of Greenville has achieved significant progress in redeveloping its core city and leveraging those improvements to create a sense of place and a dynamic job engine that is marketed collaboratively.
Following the presentation, we will break out into working groups where individuals will share challenges and opportunities from the lessons they learned. This will be conducted like a planning charrette through group discussion. Each of the groups will present to the entire group what they learned after which staff and volunteers will sift through what we learned and produce a paper which will be shared by all. Our focus will be a series of consensus-based goals that are supported by tangible, practical strategies and tactics that we can collectively begin implementing immediately.
In addition to those who normally sit at the table, we have invited the owners and or marketing directors from golf courses, private community Property Owners' Associations, real estate marketers, outdoor recreation providers including sports fishing, kayaking, cycling and others. We have of course invited some retailers, hotels and restaurateurs and many others.
I believe it will be a fun and enlightening experience that will open our minds to new ways, more collaboration and hopefully more direction for city and county ATAX committees as we look to the future. What we have been doing hasn't worked effectively so it's time to look for a model. Help be part of that solution.
But . . . the event will only be as good as the participants. So I urge you to come or send a representative that can and will speak for your organization.
I look forward to seeing you next Saturday at 9 am at City Hall. We will begin in City Council Chamber which is on the second floor.
Best wishes
Billy Keyserling
Mayor
