“Best dang beach vacation ever. Period.” – Funculator – Funtastic – These are some of the ideas that came out of the brain-storming session yesterday with regard to the summer marketing campaign.  The “brand” for this summer is FUN with an emphasis on creating the perception of value when vacationing on Panama City Beach.

Last year’s Summer White Sale, touted as wildly successful was surely a media ploy in that the actual results were not actually wet with success, but the image of the whole campaign from a PR perspective certainly was.  Featured in the likes of the New York Times and other coveted news publications, the estimated value in PR placement was in the hundreds of thousands.  However, the actual deals were nothing to call home to mom about.  As pointed out by Bryan Durta, “The deals that were to be had were nothing more than what you could find on the rack cards or local discount books.”

This year the marketing committee wanted to place an emphasis on value enhancement rather than discounts.  The idea is to create incentives that didn’t give the appearance that we were a discount location that would in turn devalue our image.  By placing an emphasis on increased value, i.e. getting more for your money, instead of saying 20% off, we look bettter.

I agree with this, but the only question, and this resounded in the room yesterday, was how do we do this and give (as Hoot Crawford so famously put) everyone a fair shake.  What is the best strategy for being sure everyone can benefit from this outside of just a few select hoteliers, attractions and restaurants?  Well, that seemed to be the presiding issue and concern.  In fact, for quite some time, there was quite a bit of discussion as to exactly how to handle this very issue until Marty McDaniel stepped in.

Marty is the new Director of the TDC and kindly reminded everyone that the details are just the details – we still need a big boom, a hook that people will grab on to and follow to Panama City Beach.  We’ve got to have a very powerful message that will capture the attention of visitors and potential visitors.  Whatever we do has to be revolutionary.  If we can come with something that is WOW, it will work.

YPartnership wanted to brand “FUN”, with maybe a Funculator on the main page of the visitpanamacitybeach.com web site that could calculate how much ‘fun’ you would have on your trip here.  The idea is to emphasize more fun, more beach, more entertainment, more summer for you, etc.

At the end of the meeting, YPartnerhship left with some ideas as to what direction we want to go and hopefully enough amunition to come back with something great, because we need it.