TDC Approves working with MTVu for Spring Break

The Tourist Development Council approved moving forward with MTVu for promoting Spring Break 2009. I guess at this point, it is too late to “go back to the drawing board.”

Here is the evolution of how it all went down.

The original MTVu proposal included a 10 day village with 8 concerts over 4 days, 300 30 second TV ad spots, 10 million online impressions, a database by which to collect user contact info (mobile numbers, email addresses, etc.), and a few more things.

The whole proposal was discussed during a marketing committee meeting and overall a motion was made to approve moving forward, but with the stipulation that the TDC wanted the price to be lowered to $200,000 (stemmed from what some believe as an effort to come up with less co-op money).

When MTVu heard about this, they weren’t that happy and came back with a proposal that was just more than half of their initial proposal for 20% less money. Of course, that wasn’t gonna work for the TDC. After calming MTVu down, Dan Rowe, et.al. was able to negotiate 250 30 second TV ad spots, 10 million online impressions, database collection, a 10 campus kick-off tour featuring Panama City Beach as a spring break vacation destination, featured premium placement on the MTVu hub page (what does that mean??), and a link back to the micro site (from where???).

Dan explained that some of the benefits of working with MTVu include that they are regulated by the FCC, they have a brand to protect, that they do NOT advertising any alcoholic products, will not publish any film/pictures of alcoholic related activity or drunk students, and that they are good for our image and our initiative to vacation responsibility.

The board stressed their desire to not spend more than $150,000, and that the rest MUST come from co-op sponsors. Staff (Dan and co.) have so far received commitments for co-op in the amount of $50,500 and anticipates that number to grow as we come closer to spring break. All additional funds generated will go first to operational costs associated (costs can be up to $90,000 above and beyond the $150,000 – someone correct me if I’m wrong here), then go to paying the TDC back for the initial $150,000 investment.

This year, compared to last year, there are actually three categories for co-op sponsors:

Lodging – hotels, condos, resorts, etc.
- There will be two levels of sponsorship opportunities, premium and all the others. Premium will be limited to 6 advertisers and will have premium placement on the main lodging page, and all the others will be on a page linked to through an “all offers”, or “all other offers” text or graphic link from the main lodging page.
Food/entertainment – restaurants, bars, clubs, etc. For this category, there are unlimited opportunities available, for premium and otherwise. The premium sponsors will have the opportunity to have their specials, etc. broadcasted to the TDC database via text messages (that is supposed to be geo-targeted).
Retail/attractions – the new element (can’t beleive this never existed before), includes retails stores or services such as Victoria Secrets or California Cycles. This category will have the same premium “text message” opportunity as the food/entertainment category.

There are a lot of cool things that can be done with text messaging marketing. I’m not sure the geo-targeting aspects are all they are cracked up to be as they require to user to have an application up and running on their phone in order to receive messages, and I’m not sure that students will be walking around with their phones open and an app running, or if they’d even start the app in the first place.

Also, with doing just plain text message advertisements are still limited to 160 characters per messasge, which can get used up pretty quick.

Can this be done without MTVu, I’m sure of it. However, at this point, what are the alternatives? I don’t know, and neither does the TDC. I’m sure they would be open to suggestions of anyone that could come in, set up a whole online marketing campaign with millions of impressions, put on a fairly large scale show with several concerts, incorporating a variety of web and tv posibilities and do it all for a package price. Anyone?

Bayou Shrimp Boat

This is a photo of an authentic and dying part of the Emerald Coast. Homemade shrimping and oyster boats are all but a thing of the past along the coastal bayous and bays of the panhandle. During their hayday, you could see dozens of these boats trolling St. Andrews, Port St Joe and Apalach Bays. Now it is rare to even glimpse a single vessel of this granduer (in my humble opinion).

This shot was taken just off Hwy 30-A on the road to Cape San Blas. Many of you know 30-A as the road to Seaside to the west of PCB. I had a “lifetime local” tell me that wasn’t 30-A, but according to the sign and all maps it’s FL Hwy 30-A just east of Port St Joe off of Hwy 98.

Description: This is one of my favorite photos. The “homemade” shrimp boat was sitting in a quiet bayou near Cape San Blas. As the sun rose it created a beautiful mirror image of the vessel. Note the bright red hand-painted boat number.

**Click on the image to see a closeup of the details in the photo.

Visit my photo blog Sand between Your Toes .

Teddy

TDC's $52 million improvement iniative

Wednesday, the TDC’s Revenue Enhancement Committee (fancy for bed tax committee) met to discuss improvement ideas for Panama City Beach and how to fund it all.

The ideas range from a new beach trash disposal system to a grass amphitheatre with bathroom and concessions facilities at Aaron Bessant Park.

The ideas stem from the Strategic Plan and include:

TDC Marketing and Awareness
- Welcome to the Beach campaign which would include welcome signs west of the Hathaway Bridge and along Highway 79, and replacing existing signs.
- New beach trash disposal system to replace the existing blue refuse containers.
- Beach safety campaign to increase public awareness about the flag warning system and fund additional flag poles. (THIS ISN’T ENOUGH, PEOPLE, AND YOU KNOW IT!)
- Estimated total cost of $500,000 per year.
Special Events Marketing
- Construct a permanent stage suitable for concerts and theatrical performances at Aaron Bessant Park, at Pier Park.
- Build an amphitheatre ‘bowl’ with a grass covered berm with restroom and concession space on the back/underside of the grass ‘bowl’. Should be capable of a 5,000 capacity.
- Create space for tents, vendor areas, or other festival support areas in the flat areas of the park.
- Estimated total coast of $5 million

I think this is a really neat idea, and definitely worth looking into, but we need to be planning for 25,000 people, not 5,000 people. Aaron Bessant Park needs some renovation, but will never have the capability to have anything much larger than the summer Concerts in the Park series. We need to be looking at improving larger capacity facilities, like Frank Brown Park.

Sports Marketing – Frank Brown Park
- Develop two additional ‘pinwheels’ of softball/youth baseball fields with the appropriate infrastructure.
- Make two of the fields in the new ‘pinwheels’ the ‘marquee’ fields with additional seating, dugouts, press boxes, etc., one for baseball, one for softball.
- Look at building a warm-up pool and permanent seating at the aquatic center to enhance potential at attracting regional swimming competitions.
- Enhance the equestrian facilities
- Estimated total cost is $7.5 to $10 million
Sports Marketing – Sports Village Complex (in addition to Frank Brown Park, would need to acquire additional land)
- Develop indoor field house to expand offerings to include court and mat sports.
- Develop 8 to 12 rectangular fields for soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, flag football, etc. Some would have grass, others artificial turf
- Develop 8 full-sized baseball fields for additional tournaments and practicing facilities.
- Estimated total cost is $33 to $35 million
Destination Marketing
- Begin international marketing efforts when the new airport comes online and our area becomes more easily accessed.
- Increase domestic advertising – more money is needed in order to fully penetrate our core markets and expand outside the southeast (or we could just use the $500k that was wasted on the Summer White Sale campaign for something that is more innovative, creative, and effective)
- Enhance the Visitor Center with new technology and look and feel
- Estimated total cost is $1 to $2 million

Now, where did all these numbers come from? That is an unknown as of now, just estimations. The committee requested of Dan and Staff to ‘zero-base’ the numbers and give details to how much each aspect of these improvements will cost, ideally to have everything spelled out by the December TDC meeting. The goal is to have everything in order to request an additional 2cents be added to the bed tax first part of the year.

Staff counsel, Doug Sale said that from implementation to actual collection could be up to 90 days, so if they could get the tax implemented first of the year, collections could start rolling in for the new season in spring break.

I’m in total agreement that we need to collect additional bed tax in order to keep up with the competition. I’ve not been too impressed with the way the money has been spent in the past, however. I will give kudos to TDC Chair Andy Phillips for staying on everyone to be sure the numbers included will have some specificity in the near future.

Fed Lowers a Half Point – I Have a Better Idea

The Federal Reserve’s Open market Committee announced Wednesday it was lowering the federal funds rate to 1%, it’s lowest level since 2004. Yet mortgage rates rose on the news and continue to rise today. Though, on the surface, this may seem contradictory it exposes a symptom of the larger financial crisis we face. Since seizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and passing the bailout plan, the Federal government has committed hundreds of billions of dollars in an attempt to thaw frozen credit markets and get the economy back on track. Unfortunately, all of that money is essentially borrowed.

Now the Feds are forced to sell billions in government bonds to fund their various bailouts and bank rescues flooding the market with an oversupply and thus driving down bond prices and driving up rates. This has a ripple effect throughout the capital and debt markets and increases the cost of borrowing for Fannie and Freddie. The higher borrowing costs are reflected in higher mortgage rates for consumers.

The bigger problem facing the Federal Reserve is that higher mortgage rates will have the effect of further weakening demand in the housing market. This will further amplify what is at the heart of this whole mess – declining home prices. As mortgage rates rise and home prices decline further, the rate of foreclosure is sure to rise putting even greater strain on banks and credit markets as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as the value of their assets depreciate and their ability to raise capital becomes more tenuous. To stop this vicious cycle the Fed and the Treasury must find a way to halt, and eventually reverse, the decline in home prices rather than continuing to merely react to each emergency caused by it. So how could they do it?

There have been a lot of proposals floated in recent weeks that aim to shore up the housing market, stop home price decline and prevent foreclosure. Some of these sound bizarre but viewed in the context of this historic financial crisis I’m willing to entertain anything.

One suggestion has been for Fannie and Freddie as well as banks taking part in the government bailout to offer mortgagors the option of a sixty year amortization. This would dramatically lower payments while not reducing the principal owed and provide an incentive to lenders in the form of greater interest income. Others say to allow everyone to refinance to some set fixed rate such as 5.25% that would provide payment stability and offer most borrowers some relief in the form of lower payments.

Still others have called for an outright principal reduction to lower mortgage balances to a point where borrower’s are no longer upside down in their homes. All of these ideas may have some merit but, in my opinion still do not address the root of the problem. We must create demand in the housing market so home prices will stabilize. How might that be done?

With thirty year mortgage rates creeping upward towards 7% for many borrowers, it is time the Feds start using some of the bailout money to back a program that would allow for a dramatically lower interest rate for all home-buyers coupled with a federally backed mortgage insurance plan to allow for lower down payments and longer amortizations. The lower rate, say 5.00% fixed for 40 years, along with a required down payment of 5% offset by a federal mortgage insurance premium of .75% annually but paid monthly would surely bring reluctant buyers back into the market. The increased demand for housing would drive up prices thus creating a win-win for the government in that the value of the bank stocks they now own would rise along with the portfolios of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s mortgage backed securities. Banks, not wanting to miss out, would begin lending again and the resulting competition would increase liquidity in the credit markets and benefit the economy as a whole and reduce the number of foreclosures.

This plan would not be a reward for bad behavior, would not punish homeowners who have paid their mortgages on time and could be easily implemented through the FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Yes, it would be expensive in the short-run. But given the impotent attempts by the Feds to stop this snowballing housing crisis by hoping banks will lend again by throwing more at them are obviously not working. We need a better idea.

For this and more, visit my blog at www.activerain.com/blogs/hpalmer

Hunter Palmer