Bay County TDC Approves Bed Tax Increase

In a meeting that ended in great applause, the Bay County Tourist Development Council unanimously voted to approve the increase in bed tax collections from 3% to 5%. With public comment from pillars of the Panama City Beach community, such as Charlie Hilton, Julian Bennett, Julie Hilton and Joe Tannehill, good arguments were made for and against the increase with a unified concern for our area.

The motion to approve suggested that one penny go towards marketing, including helping attract a low-cost carrier. Half of the second new cent would go to beach cleaning, safety awareness and signage throughout the beach. The second half of the second new cent will go to capital projects such as new ball fields at Frank Brown Park or the proposed improvements to Aaron Bessant Park in Pier Park.

“I think we should delay, not defeat the 5th cent increase,” Bennett Sr. said discussing that we need to put together a comprehensive plan as to how the 5th sent will be spent.

“We need to work on collecting what we have,” said Julie Hilton, “before we try and get more.”

Joe Tannehill, chairman of the Airport Authority board was the first to comment during the public comment portion of the meeting. He voiced his support of the bed tax increase and assured the board and confirmed to the board and the audience that the airport was ahead of schedule and under budget. He stressed that essential to the area’s success was the success of the airport and essential to the airport’s success was getting the word out to the rest of the country that we are open for business.

He emphasized that a growing number of travelers to our area will be from out of the country, but we need marketing dollars to underscore that effort. He also confirmed discussions with British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.

Peter Yesawich from YPartnership presented on why we need to increase our bed tax stressing that any increase had no direct impact on his firm or his firm’s relationship with the Panama City Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau.

His presentation explained that we had advertising budgets that were 1/2 and 1/3 of that of our direct competitors. He also stressed that we needed to have a vehicle in place to support the new airport and any low-cost airline that may come into our area. He mentioned that these are perilous times for the airline industry and that any airline would find great comfort knowing they had some financial support here in Panama City Beach. His presentation explicated the importance of having a harmonious allocation of marketing dollars and capital improvement dollars.

Yesawich said that our future visitors are not “legacy visitors” or those returning to our area, but new visitors. He explained that we need to expand our marketing reach to outside our traditional market and that we need a broader visitor base.

Buddy Wilkes, owner of Shipwreck Island Waterpark underscored this point in saying that we’ve lost our legacy visitors already and that we must focus on new customers.

There has been much discussion elsewhere and here on pcbdaily that we need to work harder to collect the rent collectors that aren’t paying instead of trying to raise the tax. I agree and disagree with this.

We need to change our collection process and the way it is enforced. Actually, that is a false statement. We need to enforce the bed tax collection as right now, it is not being enforced at all. What happens to those that do not collect? Nothing. Period. So, how do they figure out who is collecting rent, but not paying the bed tax? I don’t know, but there are smart people than me that can figure this all out, and it needs to happen, NOW.

Bill Kinsall, Bay County Clerk-elect reassured the board and audience during the public comment section that he would do everything in his power to make their collection process and research to who isn’t paying more efficient. He said the whole process will be under scrutiny and they will figure out how to fix the system.

Julie Hilton mentioned that she thought that we may be seeing 50% of the total possible bed tax revenue due to people not paying and that an increase may push more to not pay. I cannot speculate on the number, but I totally agree with her in that the number is probably larger than we think. We need to figure out a way to determine this. I also think we need to enable some sort of enforced consequence to be imposed on those that do not pay.

Yes, we need a very comprehensive plan to exactly how we’ll spend each penny of the increase, yes we need to figure out how to collect from who isn’t paying right now, but we also need more money to be sure we are ready to spread the word about Panama City Beach to the world when the new airport comes online. We also need to be sure we continue to improve our area at the same rate our competition is improving their areas, or we will become a has-been.

The argument that if we increase our rates that we’ll lose tourists just isn’t valid. An increase of 2% will yeild an increase in room rates of $20 for a week’s stay at $1000. Is someone going to be deterred by this? No. Will they even know about the change? No. Tourists don’t ask what tax rate they are paying and they aren’t going to change their mind for a measly 2%.

Good job TDC, Bay County Commissioners, please take heed, we need this for our area.

Related: Bed Tax Increase Set in Motion

TDC Meeting – Klages, Sea Oats, JBInc, New Board

Bed tax numbers were reported to be up for October, but no percentages or numbers were provided.

Lisa Armbruster presented the preliminary plans for the Sea Oat Planting and Sand Fencing project and encouraged public comment. The goal is to implement this plan next year after turtle nesting season, and Lisa advised that the funding is already in place.

After a presentation from Walter Klages that emphasized a need to increase international visibility, the board voted to follow staff’s recomendation and approve the contract for the current year including the extra money to start doing occupancy and rate studies.

The board voted to approve the Memo of Understanding with Jennifer Barbee Inc. under the assumption that they could renogotiate the stipulation requiring 1/3 of the budget to be deposited in advance with her firm. The board agreed they would like no more than 1/6 of the budget to be deposited in advance with JBInc. It was discussed that Jennifer Barbee Inc has been working on the new spring break site even without a contract. Andy expressed his concern that $95k was too much for a web site, but the board seemed to disagree.

New officers will be chosen in January and another 6 months was added to all the board member’s term. Originally, the 2 year appointments were to end in June 2009, but now they will end in January 2010. I though this was a decision to be made by the County Commission/PCB City Council. ??

The New Year’s Even Ball Drop being held at Pier Park is sponsored by the CVB and will include an 8 foot ball dropped 145 feet from a crane. Board members are unsure whether, at this point, it will be allowed to smash into the ground on top of a car.

Oh, and don’t forget the special meeting called on the Bed Tax issue on the 17th of December. I’ll add it to the calendar on the side.

Bed Tax Increase Set In Motion

Wednesday’s Revenue Enhancement Committee decided to recommend an increase in the bed tax collection from 3% to 5%. The committee decided based on a fairly detailed analysis on how to spend the money based on the needs of our area as a tourist destination.

The recommendation now will go before the Tourist Development Council (TDC) next Tuesday. If they approve the recommendation, it will have to be approved by the Bay County Commission before the tax can be collected.

Now, I can already see where the comments will go on this one. Many argue we don’t need the increase or wonder why we should increase taxes during dire economic times. Some may argue that increases such as these are partial to the larger resorts/attractions or that the TDC doesn’t know how to spend the money they have, why should we give them more.

But, the reality is that we are behind the times here and our competition passed us a long time ago. We’ve been behind for a while, and it is time to start catching up. The TDC and local authorities may not want to consider some things our competition is doing successfully **cough- lifeguards -cough**, but at least they are onto something here.

We are the lowest percentage wise bed tax collector in Northwest Florida, and other areas in South Florida that are competing for our sports marketing contracts are at 3 and 4 cents more than we are. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, if we want to compete, we need more money.

One of the largest tourism segments at risk here are the sports teams and their families that come here in droves each and every year. At immediate risk are 2 sporting events currently being wooed by our competition. They account for nearly one third of all our sports tourism traffic which equals an estimated $10 million in revenue; roughly 60% of that number goes to room rates.

Right now, sports teams that come here for competitions have to travel all over Bay County to play and have expressed their desire on many occasions to play in one location. The beach is nice, but our facilities are in need of improvement. If we don’t improve, we’ll lose the business.

Capital improvements discussed yesterday as they pertain to sports marketing included:

Enhancements to Frank Brown Park – Add two additional softball/youth baseball pinwheels which would total 5 large fields and 4 small fields; renovate existing south pinwheel; develop one of the new fields as a marquee field with expanded seating and dugouts; add additional parking; add additional restroom facilities. This would total an estimated $4.9 million
Create a Sports Village for Baseball – Develop additional baseball pinwheels, nine fields total; develop one of the new fields as a marquee field; and new parking facilities and interior roads. It wasn’t clear whether additional land will be required for this. The total estimated cost (not including any land acquisition) is $6.6 million.
Create a Sports Village for Soccer -Develop 10 rectangular fields; upgrade four existing fields to artificial turf; develop one field as marquee field; and new concession and restroom facilities. Total estimated cost of $4.4 million
Create a Sports Village for Equestrian Grounds -Develop a horse ring; build 200×300 foot open air pavilion with dirt floor; grade sod and irrigate area for paddocks and horse barns. Estimated total is $2.4 million.
Indoor Field House – Develop 100,000 foot indoor field house that could be used to expand its sports product offerings to include mat and court sports. It was recommended that $32,000 be used for a feasibility study to guide the decision making process as to the specific scope of this project and which direction we should go. Estimated cost of $16 million.

The total costs of all sports-related improvements add up to $34.3 million.

Other improvements suggested include enhancing Aaron Bessant Park to have a permanant facility for concerts and theatrical performances. The improvements would include the development of a 5,000 seat amphitheatre/concert bowl by building an extended grass-covered berm and developing flat open fields out of the raw acreage that is currently not being utilized at the park. The total cost of improvement would be around $4 million.

As part of the marketing/awareness section, it was suggested:

Revise the schedule and increase the frequency of beach grooming from 26 times a year to 38 times per year, ramping up the frequency during the peak seasons.
Add 100 extra trash refuse containers along the beach during spring break at public beaches
Add 50 refuse containers specific to recycling of plastic bottles and aluminum cans during spring break at public beaches.
Develop :30 and :60 PSA’s to run on local networks on beach safety.
Purchase additional billboards to promote flag warning system.
Partner with Boomer Aviation to fly red flags behind the plane on red flag days during peak seasons.

Currently each penny garners an estimated $2.2 million each year with a total $6.6 million being collected per year right now. An increase of 2 pennies will result in an annual increase of around $4.4 million, which would result in an estimated total collected of $11 million per year. Of course, this number goes up if occupancy rates go up.

The current bed tax usage is as follows:

0.5% – TDC Marketing/Awareness/Operations
- Beautification Program
- Keep the Beach Clean Campaign
1.5% – CVB Destination Marketing
1.0% – TDC Beach Nourishment

The recommended usage if raised to 5%:

0.75% – TDC Marketing/Awareness/Operations
- Enhanced Beautification Program
- Enhanced Keep the Beach Clean
- Beach Safety Campaign
1.25% – Capital Projects to enhance Sports and Special Event Marketing
- Development of amphitheater and special event ground at Aaron Bessant Park
- Expansion of softball/baseball fields at Frank Brown Park
- Development of Sports Village Complex
- Assist in funding on-going maintenance of new athletic fieldd
1.0% – TDC Beach Nourishment
2.0% – CVB Destination Marketing

Click here for a copy of Dan Rowe’s presentation

Jennifer Barbee Takes the Cake – New Panama City Beach Web Site

In addition to talking about MTVu, today’s TDC meeting included presentations from the board’s top 3 web development companies that submitted their RFQ’s to build the CVB’s new web site for Panama City Beach.

The three included Miles Media, Jennifer Barbee Inc., and Simple View, in order of presentation.

If you subscribe to our Twitter page, you may have seen some opinions as the presentations took place, if not, well, you missed out.

First, I’d like to say, working in the digital media/marketing world for the last 3 years, I’ve consistently noticed particular trends. Most of the time, the guys that can create brilliant back-end cms systems with tons of “coded” features including data collection, reports, functionality, automated processes, etc. tend to really lack on the creative end. Their pretty pictures may look pretty to them, but to everyone else, they are pretty plain and not very visually stimulating. This is good for some, but not for all.

Next, the agencies that are great graphic artists, that create very visually stimulating graphics using trendy, relevant and current design elements tend to lack on the back end capabilities. The sites look good, but don’t do much.

The trick is to find an agency that is good at both, not good, but great, actually. The agencies that are great at both are few and far between. This observation was consistent with the presentations today.

The first group to present, Miles Media came out guns blazin, suits ‘a wearin. Ok, not really, but they were all wearing suits. Their presentation began with intros by none other than Roger Miles, himself. They rotated what looked like a practiced and choreographed routine, sharing presentation points with the entire team of 3, plus Roger.

They began with credibility statements, explaining that they had doubled their revenue and more than tripled their client base in the last 5 years. Currently they have over 180 clients and $35 million in annual revenue.

They operate one of the largest travel web sites in the country, visitflorida.com, which fights Vegas for number 1 with regards to most visited in the tourism/travel industry during the peak season, and falls to around number 5 during the shoulder seasons. They’ve never spent any money on any SEM efforts and have always focused on SEO. SEM = search engine marketing, or paid placement; SEO = search engine optimization, or optimizing the site so that search engines will pick it up on crawls. “Competitors spend millions annually on SEM, we spend nothing,” Roger Miles said.

I took a bunch of notes, but I’ll cut right to the chase. Their creative was weak, their ideas were OK, just OK, and nothing in their presentation poped. I think I said in one of my twitter updates, they were good, but not WOW.

Roger, I know you read pcbdaily, no hard feelings. You guys do great work, just not what PCB is looking for right now.

I’ll skip Jennifer Barbee real quick and go to Simple View. At first, the board thought Simple View had the lead, and I agreed. They seemed to have the experience we wanted, the client list to back it up, and the capability to fulfill our creative marketing desires. I think they blew it with their presentation, which was very dry, boring, and displayed their complete lack of creative talent. They started the whole thing out with a 5 minute video that looked dated, poorly put together, boring, and entirely too long. At first, I was able to tolerate the vid, but after about 2 minutes of the same music, no narration, and screen-shots and words flashing across, they lost me. They started reviving me when they showed some of their web work, which some was pretty good, but I started dozing off with the “tech-talk” on how the back end cms system works, etc. Their entire presentation seemed to be working up to a system that the TDC could take and make changes themselves, with the ability to create pages, new navigation menus, or new web initiatives. This seemed like good flexibility, but everything seemed geared towards, “ok, we’re done, here ya go,” and then the vendor disappears.

All in all, the board decided they were NOT what they were looking for as they worried Panama City Beach might get lost in the middle of all of Simple View’s ‘big’ clients.

Last, but not least, Jennifer Barbee Inc. Their presentation was second, and I knew right away, they would probably be the best. First off, their presentation was very graphically oriented, very fun to look at. That captured my attention, I was ready to see what they could do on the back end. It was very apparent, very quickly, that they were great graphic artists and could make very visually stimulating creative. And, the more Jennifer spoke, the more impressed I was.

Jennifer started out as a software developer, and over the years morphed into web development and marketing. As of two years ago, she had worked her way up to be (I think) one of the Presidents of USDM, an interactive marketing company, regarded to be one of the best in the destination and tourism industry. Her separation from them was because she wanted to get back into something that was smaller, or a boutique. She wanted to get back that intimacy that came with having only a few select clients. She isn’t the only one that I’ve know to do that over the last couple of years. Sometimes “corporate” just gets too corporate.

One of the big concerns in the RFQ review process with Jennifer was her company size and age. The marketing committee was concerned that maybe she was inexperienced or that her company didn’t have the resources to handle an account like Panama City Beach. Turns out, this is exactly what ended up giving her the greatest value. She conveyed the feeling that we would be special and given personal, individual treatment. Something the TDC very much liked.

Jennifer clearly demonstrated her knowledge of all the latest trends in the social media side with innovative ways to implement marketing initiatives across the web, not just on the Panama City Beach web site. She mentioned not only the importance of up-to-date, fresh content, but the importance of distributing that content across the web using social media, link exchanges, paid bloggers, videos and more.

Something else that was cool was their idea of customizing site content based on user submitted information. She showed an example of a visitor coming to a site, a brief survey may come up, and based on the results, the visitor is taken to a page that is specific to what that visitor may be looking for, with interactive capabilities that are tailored to him or her.

Jennifer spoke into her agency’s capability to make marketing recommendations based on varying environmental changes, i.e. economic downturn, etc., tailoring initiatives to best leverage what people may be looking for during these times.

At the end of the presentations, it was clear that Jennifer Barbee Inc. had the graphical talent to stay on top with the look and feel of the new site, and a strong back end knowledge to create a site that has tons of interactive capabilities.

The board was all in agreement, with the exception of Mr. Walsingham, that JBinc. was the right choice.

Even PanamaCityBeach.com’s Charles Mason commented at the end his agreement with the board – there’s your published confirmation Marty!

I was convinced that JBinc. was not just the best of the three, but the best for the job. Congrats Jennifer!

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?

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.

MTVu Coming… with full database and measurement

The TDC Marketing Committee voted today to move forward with the $250K MTVu Spring Break Partnership. There seems to be a lot of kinks to be worked out, and there were definitely “wishes” put out by the committee and audience members that simply won’t be fulfilled, but the good news is that the CVB will begin properly gathering data with a “PCB Insiders” program, enabling Spring Breakers (and other future segments) to sign up for email and mobile phone updates and promotions. We’ll be sure to get results of these efforts at the end of Spring Break 09.

This will all be accomplished through a fantastic rich media, interactive Spring Break 09 website that may or may not be developed by YPartnership of “Summer White Sale Website” infamy. The new staff at the CVB should be able to make this quantum leap from the failed email marketing programs of recent past, because the new mobile phone and email programs are outsourced services that are easily implemented.

The co-op partners who participate will be able to communicate with the new database being built by the CVB. The database will be rich with information and accessible for clear measurement.

My question is… are paying co-op partners the only ones who should benefit from the TDC/CBV database? I mean, if I were a bed tax collector, writing that check every month, I’d kinda’ like to think I had access to anything the TDC gathered. But, you know, I’m not a bed tax collector. I’m just sympathetic to their collection burdens. If you are a bed tax collector, this is a good place for you to voice your opinion.

MTVu is good for the local economy. It worked last year for a lot of people. MTVu brings enough traffic that rooms are booked and promoters/sponsors have all kinds of opportunities to create relationships with these future guests and residents for a lifetime.

We’ll be writing more posts about Spring Break all the way up to the Big Bang, and welcome your opionions. But here’s one thing you Spring Break haters can consider in the meantime: How about planning to get out and meet the students face-to-face to accomplish some of your goals? Why not plan drug and alcohol prevention pizza parties? What about a job fair? Maybe join the dozens of “Alternative Spring Breakers” who will be doing things such as cleaning the beach or ministering their faith in God? Go help the Panama City Rescue mission collect cans every afternoon.

There is plenty of good and bad on this beach, 365 days per year. You can choose to be a part of the Good.

Video of Jason Koertge on the Lee Sullivan Show

I was on the Lee Sullivan Show a few weeks ago, and have gotten the show online. Lee and I discussed the TDC, the Summer White Sale and how IT WASN’T wildly successful, college spring break, sports marketing, bed tax increase, and tons more.

I’ve broken the show down to four videos. Total, it is around 20 minutes.

Segment 1

Segment 2:

Segment 3:

Segment 4:

Be sure to post a comment below!

Now, Back to Regularly Scheduled Bashing

Notes from Today’s TDC Meeting

Bed Taxes are up $117,000 thanks to back-taxes being collected.
The Circus by the Sea is more than likely coming back. Maybe it will draw more crowds next year.
The CVB has a new interactive marketing manager coming on board.
Rowe distributed estimates of costs of strategic plan proposals to board. I’ll be asking for copies of those to post here soon.
Mayor Gayle Oberst explained that Panama City Beach could not use bed taxes to fund lifeguards. As one Marketing Committee member told me later, it’s a good thing we’re smarter than Walton county on that issue. I have a lifeguard manifesto brewing; I’m sure it’ll come out any day now.
The TDC’s market research firm, Klages, is up for contract renewal, and the board showed concern that the 2008 results were not worth the investment. Tabled. Marketing Research, tabled.

Now to the juicy stuff…

Spring Break is heating up quickly… Spring Break funding was tabled after Dan Rowe requested approval on the MTVu plan ($150K CVB, $100K co-op).

Chairman Andy Phillips and Marketing Committee Chairman Buddy Wilkes questioned whether the co-op could really raise $100K. Mr. Rowe believes so; however lodging leaders stepped up quickly and said that because of the exclusive booking deal MTVu has with Student City, they would not participate in that co-op.

Board member Mike Bennett suggests the funding should go into a different Spring Break program. Dan Rowe suggested that if it’s not MTVu, then put the money in something other than Spring Break. Jack Bishop said the Klages report proved the CVB should invest the $150,000 into Spring Break. (It’s getting good!)

Folks in the audience suggested that only the Boardwalk benefited from the 2008 Spring Break plan. (It’s really getting good!)

There was a hint that there may be another Spring Break community workshop. The marketing committee will address the issue before the next TDC meeting on November 6. (Don’t you think this is going to get good!?)

And More Utter Disregard for the Special Event Policy

The Board unanimously approved 2009 funding for the Panama City Beach Seafood, Wine, & Music Festival. Wow. Wasn’t even on the agenda.

Special Event Side Note – Do you realize that 3.25 million dollars worth of lodging has to be brought in to raise $65K in bed taxes?

If PCBSWMF would have reported the need for $65,000 invested in the infrastructure at Frank Brown Park for next year’s event, that would be different. PCBSWMF Promoter Jack Bishop stated that the event could not serve 30,000 attendees as reported by previous promoters. Hopefully PCBSWMF will use all $65K to improve the infrastructure. We’ll see.

Speaking of we’ll see, we’ll see the full PCBSWMF report next month. Hopefully that report will include exactly how and where the 2008 TDC investment was spent.

In the meantime, we sure would like to have other promoters comment here with your thoughts on the TDC’s Special Events “Policy.”

If I misinterpreted anyone’s comments from today’s meeting, please email me at lancaster.kirk@gmail.com, or even better yet, clarify your message right here in the comments section.

TDC Narrows Pool Down to Three Website Companies

Friday, during a special workshop the TDC’s Interactive Committee, Marty McDaniel and Buddy Wilkes, whittled the 6 companies that submitted Requests for Qualifications (RFQ) down to their top three.

The six companies that submitted RFQ’s are as follows:

Simple View Inc.
Jennifer Barbee Inc.
Miles Media
Cyber Sytes
The 543 Group
Ypartnership

Susan Estler, VP of Marketing for the CVB recommended Simple View, Jennifer Barbee, and Miles Media as the top three that had the capability and capacity to handle the interactive needs of Panama City Beach.

According to Ms. Estler, Simple View had excellent references. All of their existing clients were extremely satisfied with their performance, and to date, Simple View has yet to lose a client. Their client list spans from Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Scottsdale, Park City, and tons more. One of the more important issues discussed was the database that will be amassed with this new interactive initiative, and Simple View assured us that the database that is created using our initiatives will, indeed, be ours (well, the CVB’s). This is a huge issue with our current agency, Miles Media, which we’ll discuss in a moment.

Second on Ms. Estler’s recommendation list was Jennifer Barbee, Inc. Jennifer Barbee is a newly formed interactive marketing agency that comes from very well developed roots. Jennifer’s position was secured in this list because of her background with USDM, who is considered somewhat the industry standard in interactive marketing. The database issue is not existent as the data amassed will belong to the CVB. As an added bonus, Barbee uses the same database system as the CVB, further easing the movement of data from the agency to the CVB. Her experience and work portfolio is in line with what the CVB is looking for, in fact, so much so, that the only reason she is in second is because of her company being in its infancy.

The third on the list was Miles Media. Miles Media is the current interactive agency holding the reigns of the CVB web site, VisitPanamaCityBeach.com, and there are several issues with this relationship, with the major issue being who controls the database. Marty McDaniel and Buddy Wilkes both agreed that in the past, Miles Media has been very uncooperative in sharing the database that the Panama City Beach CVB marketing efforts has generated. That is to say, they will not let us have the database that, essentially, we paid for through our marketing efforts that they deployed. Miles Media’s excuse is that all of the user data that all of their campaigns generates is shared with the Visit Florida database and that once it enters that database, it belongs to that “domain”, and can’t be given out to individual clients. I would agree, that the Panama City Beach CVB should not be given access to a database that includes data from campaigns or efforts that are other than their own, however (and this is a big however), there is no reason why Miles Media can’t distinguish the difference between “our” data and the data of someone else’s marketing efforts. Further more, if they are submitting the data to some “master” database, then there is no reason that they can’t duplicate “our” data so as to keep it segregated. If they can’t, I would submit that that is their problem, not ours, and they just need to figure it out. As the contact database administrator of over 750,000 contacts, I can assure you that if I told the principles of my company that I can’t distinguish the difference between different databases within the database, I would have been fired a long time ago.

There are nifty things called computers and programs that allow people to do cool things like organize data however you want, need, or desire to based on whatever you want.

As indicated by the committee members, the database issue in the past with Miles Media has been unsolvable. The committee felt that moving forward, Miles Media would continue to be unwilling to change their approach on this issue. The committee members decided that it would be prudent to ask the question up front whether Miles Media would be willing to share with the Panama City Beach CVB the database their marketing efforts generate, and if the answer was still no, they would be moved to position 4, and have virtually no chance on continuing to be the interactive agency of record. At this point, Cyber Sytes would replace Miles Media in position and move to position three.

You don’t have to be told that it was decided that Cyber Sytes would be in position four. It was agreed upon by all present that Cyber Sytes has a very talented team and in the last two years, they have made very positive movement by way of bringing on talented graphics arts staff and have grown professionally and artistically. They have become virtually THE web design firm in Bay County, and have been recognized for this. However, the committee agreed, they just didn’t think Cyber Sytes was “ready” for the CVB.

The process moving forward will include a special meeting to be called sometime in between next Wednesday’s meeting (agenda forthcoming) and the next scheduled meeting to hear presentations from the top two agency picks, Simple View, Inc., and Jennifer Barbee, Inc.

I will, of course, be covering these meetings, so stay tuned.