Bull City Mutterings

Credit the late Jack Bond for Innovating the Longevity Incentive

2010-03-12T10:11:00.001-05:00

It seems some folks around the country have been intrigued about how the Tourism Development Authority in Durham came up with the idea of making what amounted to 8% of my compensation over the years a longevity incentive. So here is how it happened.

When I came to Durham, even though by that time I had nearly two decades of destination marketing management under my belt, I worked without a customary letter of agreement for the first few years until I had proven myself.

During the discussion of the initial agreement, the TDA employed a best practice formula from a national association of one month of pay for each year served should the agreement end, up to a certain limit. It is considered fair because community marketing can be very political and mined with special interests.

I was blessed in Durham in jumpstarting DCVB to team with both an excellent City and County manager, Orville Powell who is now a professor in the Midwest and the late Jack Bond who passed away in 2001 and in shown in the photo above. They really grasped the potential for DCVB’s mission to generate non-resident revenue for the City and County and each bent over backwards to make us successful.

When Jack retired as County Manager in 1991, he served terms on the Tourism Development Authority (DCVB’s governing board) while in private business and during stint as Deputy Chief Auditor for the State.

It was Jack, quickly endorsed by other Authority members, who suggested that the severance be re-articulated into an earned longevity incentive instead of just the typical parachute for when an executive is fired. Actually I've learned since that severance covers a lot of meanings like this, not just when you "get" severed.

Jack and other Authority members saw that I was a good fit for Durham and while they knew how much I love this community they also didn't believe it was fair or smart to take take that for granted.

So they installed the longevity incentive in my employment agreement predicated of course on my meeting some stiff performance requirements and forgoing any employment with competitors. It worked and I worked hard to earn it, just completing a supercharged 20.5 year relationship.

It wasn’t the TDA’s only innovation. Working with an HR expert, they implemented a performance based compensation plan 10 years ago. Under that plan up to another third of the CEO's compensation is put at risk each year and calibrated to performance. The CEO then employs this with all other staff but the percentage at risk varies.

DCVB owes its remarkable marketing success to two pillars…research and innovation. And the TDA has also been not only innovative but thoughtful and conservative and fair when it came to matters of compensation. The longevity incentive was just part of that.

Even though the longevity was earned over two decades, it made good sense for DCVB and for me at the end of my tenure to pay it out over five or more years. I would have argued for that regardless of the current short term budgetary impacts.

And anyone who knows how intense destination marketing can be and that I practiced it at an even higher level of intensity, knows I probably made $8 an hour when all was said and done and loved every minute of it.

Watching The Flowers Grow

2010-03-11T14:11:00.001-05:00

Retirement is definitely not boring. And I’m getting to see life at a different pace and with time to read, walk Mugs, blog etc. But also some thing I’ve missed over the years. While I only live a mile from Downtown, I’m fortunate to be surrounded by a stand of about 70 trees, some 50+ feet tall, Virginia and loblolly pines, ash, elm, maple, oak, red bud etc. and nearly 100 shrubs. But this year I also planted 100 bulbs and the first one flowered today.

When Big Never Seems Big Enough

2010-03-11T11:12:00.001-05:00

There are a lot of reports that seemingly exaggerate cultural-heritage as tourism activities, usually by not using all traveler as the base so the percentages look higher.

If it is on purpose, it is understandable in a way. It takes a lot to get through the thick skulls of many tourism officials who are stuck back in 1896 and obsess with conventions and meetings to the exclusion of the bigger picture.

Thus I’m anticipating some questions about the chart above (click to enlarge) during a national joint task force I’m chairing of destination marketing and cultural-heritage officials.

But when you click to enlarge the next chart of all visitor activities regardless of “main” purpose for the trip, you’ll see that cultural-heritage activities taken collectively are every bit as significant as conventions and meetings and individually hold their own with spectator sports/Olympics.

The issue isn’t bragging rights nor to enable a sense of entitlement. Destination marketing organizations must shape each individual community’s story to appeal to its strengths and to optimize spending and visitation while balancing special interests.

Online/Digital Overtakes Print in 2010

2010-03-10T09:55:00.001-05:00

Bill Geist, a friend and college for many years pens a very informative and witty blog called, you guess it, Bill Geist’s Zeitgeist.

Today he notes research that predicts 2010 will be the first time advertisers will spend more online/digital than on print. I won’t be surprised but as he notes advertising is really only one marketing tactic among many and decisions are about blend and going where your customers are.

And even drilling down to just advertising, it is all about blend, not either/or.

And to know where your customers are you need research. And unfortunately, all to many marketers have yet to include research as the foundation of marketing.

Malls and Sense of Place

2010-03-09T12:20:00.001-05:00

Greg Lindsay’s blog for Fast Company recently was an excellent overview of how and why malls became so standardized and the impact on the sense of place in some communities.

Durham is fortunate that when the company formerly know as Urban developed The Streets at Southpoint here, it took a very innovative approach and tried its best to tie the mall in to Durham’s look through extensive brickwork, chimney’s and faux retro outdoor signs.

Durham is also fortunate that its first mall of this type, Northgate, is still owned and continually updated by a local family that remains dedicated to the community. They are often handicapped by a mall or two in a community to the east and south that has routinely required leases forbidding a store in Durham and greatly misleading national tenants with misperceptions that the region is centric when it is very polycentric with no dominant center, requiring two if not three or four stores of a type.

Northgate has also been handicapped by demo maps that show nearby Duke University as a black hole, when in reality it is one of the largest employers in North Carolina. Kudos to Northgate for fighting through this BS. When Durhamites assert that there is simply no such place as Raleigh-Durham (the truncated name of a co-owned airport,) remember you’re being loyal to local families like the one that owns Northgate.

Durham is also a leader in urban gardening and enthusiasts might be interested in a Fast Company blog today about adaptive reuse of part of a Cleveland mall for that purpose.

United Breaks Guitars Song 3 - "United We Stand" on the Right Side of Right

2010-03-07T16:11:00.001-05:00

Dave Carroll has completed his trilogy that began with “United Breaks Guitars,” which has crested 8 million viewers.

One Laptop Per Child

2010-03-07T15:33:00.001-05:00

People didn’t believe me but when I retired from DCVB 60+ days ago, my goal was to decompress and get back in touch with some other aspects of my life after nearly 40 incredible intense years in destination marketing, more than half at DCVB.

My goal, based on some sage advice is to wait on firming up any plans including where I volunteer, for at least a year. But of course, with my penchant for reading, things catch my eye including the article in Rotary magazine this month about a global education program called One Laptop Per Child.

The image above is a $75 tablet third generation version due out in 2012 that Andy Greenberg reviewed just as I retired. This is a fascinating project to fuel education in remote areas, where virtually indestructible laptops can readily network with low or self power, empower teachers and open the world to kids 6 to 12 years old.

Toady Passed

2010-01-23T11:46:00.002-05:00

Sorry I've been incommunicado. For those who took such kind interest in my older, female English Bull Dog, Toady passed away this morning during a routine visit to the vet. The folks at North Paw Animal Hospital did all they could to revive her but her heart had just given out.

I was just outside the door and got to say goodbye. I've had to take her in the back door at the vet for years now because of the Alzheimers.

She's been a great companion for more than a decade and I miss her deeply. But I'm glad she went quickly and without pain. I'm also grateful for the last several months. She's been happy and affectionate, even frisky (as frisky as an English Bull Dog can be) and pracing and running like a pup. She had also regained that Bull Dog sense of humor.

She even took off and raced me to the door last night. I'm just glad she could wait until I got back from the Pacific Northwest.

Goodbye Sweet Girl. RIP

Kudos on Cultural Industries Analysis

2010-01-05T14:16:00.000-05:00

Kudos to the NC Departure of Cultural Resources for teaming with the Department of Commerce and its Policy Research & Strategic Planning Division and adopting very credible techniques for measuring the economic impact of what the report terms the “creative” industries (note the plural which is another kudo.)

For far too many years, enthusiasts and advocacy organizations around the nation have deployed impressive but flawed techniques to document the impact of culture and the arts that weren’t defensible.

But this report uses ImPlan methodology, an input-output analysis with factors specific to this state including various economic codes to generate not just the typical “gross” spending but the actual net “value added” to the state’s economy.

Balancing Special Interests

2010-01-04T15:46:00.000-05:00

A key element of community destination marketing is balancing or some say “resisting" special interests. Special interests range from the very subtle to bullying.

Far too many DMO’s though get cornered into pandering to special interests. It starts with giving preferential treatment based on “who’s asking.” The “who” in “who’s asking” might be based on power and money or politics or even friendship.

In many communities, pandering to special interests is too embedded in the culture for the DMO exec to resist or change or the communities only select DMO’s they know will play along and give special treatment to a particular part of town or a theater, festival, hotel, sports event or restaurant, golf course or meeting facility.

And if the DMO exec in these cultures tries to resist the pressure, they are likely to hear a comment like “I think the organization needs a change in direction” and the person or group uttering the statement typically means that the change needs to be in “their” direction.

In reality, few people think of themselves as a special interest. They just see the world through a lens that puts their interests at the center or they get hammered by owners or headquarter offices operating with the premise that the only way to leverage the benefits of a DMO is to have it in your pocket.

In Durham, I’ve benefited from the strong egalitarian value inherent in Durham’s overall character or personality.

In almost every case, the people who demand special treatment don’t grasp that any one element of a community’s visitor product, at best, will involve 4% to 10% of visitors or that blending elements into an overall community story is far more effective than stereotyping it around one element or another...

Fortunately, the governing boards under which I’ve served have each had strong policies and in fact evaluated my performance in part on the ability to resist special interests. They’ve also displayed the collective and individual courage to stand firm. when “the boat is being rocked” by a special interest.

At DCVB, the key I’ve found to balancing special interests here is that the governing board right at the start, embedded several elements central to the organization’s culture including these six:

Ensure decisions are always data or information driven vs. by anecdotes, opinions, emulation, so-called conventional wisdom or “who’s asking.”

Shepard “place based” assets. These are assets that are unique to Durham or home grown and distinguish it from other communities.

Make decisions on what “segments” to pursue based on optimizing fair market share, exploiting the community’s overall potential and diversification.
Calibrate decisions based on the percentage of visitors interested in an activity and the percentage who use that activity as the main purpose for a trip.
Develop platforms from which any and all local businesses and organizations can harvest a fair share of visitors drawn to the community.

Find ways to celebrate those entities that earn a national or regional reputation but make sure every entity is listed.

Vetting Mega Sports Events Is No Slam Dunk

2009-12-30T16:15:00.002-05:00

I’m a lifelong sports fan so I understand that decisions about sports, like other components of culture, often are emotional not logical, thus the term “fanatic,” I guess.

But when groups or communities go “big game hunting” as one Mayor termed it, in search of mega-sports events, the costs and benefits have to be weighted carefully by a destination marketing organization.

Unfortunately too many destination execs get caught up in the hype or they make or are cornered into making decisions based on “who’s asking” and “to go along to get along.” But that isn’t the role of a DMO. Our job is to provide communities, regardless of who’s asking, good, solid factual cost/benefit information.

Of course, this is much harder than it sounds. Many sports fanatics can’t take any scrutiny as this is thought to be criticism, so they typically form opinions without hard information. And the pushing and shoving often begins before any thoughtful analysis can be done. More than a few community officials and news outlets, for which sports can be big business, often become co-dependent with the hype.

There can be a lot of reasons for communities to host mega-sports events but two of the reasons most often cited, creating or rehabilitating community image and driving economic impact, are not guaranteed. Here are a handful of resources that any DMO with a destination contemplating mega-events should make sure are in the mix or resources used to vet the decision.

The first research I read was done by the researchers analyzing the impact on Göteborg, Sweden following a decade when that community hosted one mega-sports event after another to promote, shape and rehabilitate image. Any impact quickly dissipated.

The second was the book Major League Losers by an economist analyzing the realities behind the claims used to justify building major sports complexes for team owners. I guess the title gives away the findings. There is also one called Sports, Jobs and Taxes.

The third was an analysis by an economist at a Florida University looking at the impact of the a mega-sports-event on cities by comparing sales tax collections on the exact dates, the year prior, year of and year after hosting the mega-event. There was hardly a blip. The event displaced as much as it generated.

The fourth was a study of the Calgary Olympics which also found that any impact rapidly dissipated unless followed by mega-events within a year to 18 months.

Now comes an evaluation by the European Tour Operators Association that hosting the Olympics can hurt rather than help a country’s tourism economy in the long run for a variety of reasons.

There are many reasons to host a sports event but the decisions on behalf of a community are complicated. Regardless of who it might upset, a destination marketing organization executive must deliver the facts and probe behind the hyperbole.

Top 10 Reasons DMO’s Aren’t Accredited

2009-12-29T15:01:00.000-05:00

Hats off to the 100 Destination Marketing Organizations (DMO’s) that have earned accreditation. But it is hard to fathom why some haven’t pursued this distinction. Here are 10 reasons that come to mind:

Too “old school” to update to best practices.
Misperceiving it as only for very small or very large DMO's.
Disorganized and haven’t assigned someone to manage the project.
Fearful of rejection rather than view it as a diagnostic to inform improvement.
Too proud to ask for help or worried about revealing secrets.
Overestimate the work involved or failure to view it as a process.
Failure to grasp the importance as a signal of credibility.
Cronies aren’t accredited either.
Hoping to get in through the back door via who they know.
Resistant to change…the old way has worked fine all these years.

Which Use Ultimately Yields More In Local Tax Revenue? Community Marketing or “Build It And They Will Come?

2009-12-22T14:12:00.005-05:00

The logic was clear when the “room occupancy and tourism development tax” was pioneered as a special tax by the NC General Assembly in 1982 specifically to self-fund local community destination visitor promotion as a pump to in turn fuel 13 times that amount in sales tax revenues alone to help fund local governments.

But from the minute the ink dried on the Governor’s signature, local officials have tried to divert it to other uses. Some egged on by individuals or organizations not original enough to propose a self-funded tax of their own or just plan envious. Others were hoodwinked by businesses that often didn’t collect or generate local sales taxes themselves but all too willing to push officials to divert revenues from this one as a subsidy for pet projects or to fund the public portion of a so-called partnership.

Actually many officials didn’t need encouragement to try to raid or end-run the fundamental purpose of the special tourism development tax. Some resent the strings attached to special taxes or refuse to accept how unfair it is to deploy them the same way as general tax revenues.

The concept of using a tax to generate an increase in overall tax revenues is lost on those who believe that the only way tax revenues can be generated or increased is by politically increasing the tax rate or levying a new tax.

Many don’t grasp or have flip flopped the law of supply and demand, failing to understand that only by generating “demand” as in “more visitors” can existing or new facilities be justified or made sustainable over the long-term.

Others are just too far left-brained to grasp the more right-brain notions of managing perceptions or overcoming objections to get on the list for consideration by visitors falling under the spell of “build it and they will come” so often used as a developer mantra…but as the New York Times revealed, “not for long.”

Below is a tale of three communities, taking three different approaches to deployment of the special tourism development tax:

The first uses 100% of the room occupancy and tourism development tax as intended. What it reaps in visitor generated tax revenue per 1,000 residents is used as the benchmark.
The second is Durham which expends half the State House Finance guideline for what should be designated for marketing alone and as a result reaps 36% less than the benchmark.
The third is a community that spends lavishly on brick and mortar facilities and less on marketing and reaps 50% less than the benchmark.

This is only one of many sources of evidence that communities with the discipline to follow the State’s guidelines are the winners. Those who siphon the special tax off for other purposes do so at a tremendous, hidden cost to their constituents and communities. It is also clear that “build it and they will come” ultimately results in far less overall revenue.

Politicians like the late Senator Swain and former Representative George Miller were farsighted when they pioneered the room occupancy and tourism development tax and established guidelines for its use. Present-day elected officials with that same grasp should be celebrated. Those who don’t need to be motivated to come up with similar win/win self-funding solutions.

Web 3.0 in 3-D

2009-12-14T13:25:00.004-05:00

Web 3.0 will revolutionize search and surf (and television too) according to a blog on Friday by Fast Company writer Kit Eaton. The potential for marketing destination communities is huge.

My Two Least Favorite Subjects In College

2009-12-07T11:19:00.000-05:00

My two least favorite subjects in college were statistics and microeconomics. Accounting at 7:30 a.m. may have bumped micro to third.

Ironically, as destination marketing has become more information or data-driven, I’ve ended up using statistics and microeconomics to unwrap problems, select solutions etc.

More than a bit ironic. But two recent books Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics each co-authored by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner illustrate not only why using these tools is far more effective than raw anecdotal opinions, so-called conventional wisdom or intuition but also much more fun.

Statistics and micro economics let you look behind what appear to be cause and effect to determine what really works and what just appears to work.

So my advice to anyone who wants to jump ahead in destination marketing? Take statistics and microeconomics and of course history and a good dose of consumer behavior psych as very, very practical background.

Social Media Replacing Email – Not!

2009-12-04T10:48:00.003-05:00

People who bemoan email seem to believe that somehow social media would replace it. I don’t know why or how, really. They tend to be folks who have never really made the transition, and don’t understand the speed and effectiveness email can bring to everyday communications. Maybe they are still holding out that we’ll all revert the good old days of an in-basket full of mail and yellow stickies for calls to return?

But the Neilson research graph below reveals that people who are high social media consumers are even more--not less--likely to be high email consumers.

Third Party Analysis of Visitor Spending in Durham NC

2009-12-03T08:48:00.007-05:00

Thanks to a partnership with D. K. Shifflet and IHS Global Insights, DCVB is able to benchmark the spending by visitors while in Durham, using the more accurate ImPlan Input-Output methodology.

There are some interesting shifts mostly up, but one down, between ’04 (when Durham fully emerged from the effects of 9/11) and 2008 before the full effects of the downturn.

Lodging is getting better at yield management and systematically increasing rates as demand increases (which of course have now been deflated.) The piece of the visitor spending pie in Durham increased from 18% to 21%.

Food and Beverage, the largest portion of overall spending while visitors are in Durham kept pace at 25%.

Of concern is that shopping--the largest activity by visitors nationwide--dropped in Durham both in real terms and as a proportion of visitor spending here from 21% to 18%, a sign that Durham visitors are being harvested by new centers close to Durham denying Durham retail businesses of their full due and local government of tax revenues.

Entertainment increased its portion of overall Durham visitor spending from 16% to nearly 18%, and this was really before the new DPAC had effect. Many Durham entertainment features are free-of-charge which makes this area lower than it could be.

And overall, visitor spending in Durham expanded by 11% between ’04 and ’08 confirming that Durham is drawing more visitors, who are circulating and spending more while they are here.

DCVB conducts this analysis every other year but in the interim years it is able to project the results within 1/10 of 1%. Not bad.

5 Images Document the American Tobacco Historic District from 1891 to 2009

2009-11-30T11:02:00.003-05:00

What we now call the American Tobacco Historic District is Downtown’s front yard in some respects. It is also one area where aerials are unobstructed and images drawn or taken over a span of more than a hundred years show a remarkable transformation.

First a bird’s eye view rendering in 1891 showing the Old Bull Building and the beginning of the District’s tobacco heritage.

Then a shot in the 1950’s with the Lucky Strike factory in full production and the area where the DBAP and DPAC are now was populated with single home residential.

An image from the late 1980’s/early 1990’s after the Lucky Strike Factory had closed and American Tobacco had moved out of Durham.

An image of the District after an attempt by the owner to move the Durham Bull’s to Raleigh was blocked, resulting in construction of the new Durham Bull’s Athletic Park where the huge parking lot was in the image above. The owner had added an office building in right field, but the factory was still dormant and the area to the north used to park and maintain transit buses.

Seventy percent of attendance at the new DBAP is visitor generated and the visitors begin to make the area viable.

An image of the American Tobacco Historic District today with the factory transformed to offices and restaurants, the transit facilities relocated and the DBAP joined by the Durham Performing Arts Center. The result of $100 million or so in public funds and thanks to tax credits and Duke University, with even more leveraged in private investment.

And this is just Downtown's front yard.

Durham Earns Its Stripes!

2009-11-24T10:57:00.005-05:00

Durham is the unidentified showcase in new print ads and videos by the NC Division of Tourism, Sports and Film Development.

Here is why this is such a milestone.

When Durham first jumpstarted DCVB as its marketing agency, two of its first challenges were to get on the radar and scrub up the Durham identity within our own state’s tourism organizations including what was then the North Carolina Division of Tourism.

With no Durham gatekeeper, quite often Durham was not listed at all or Durham based assets were parceled out to other communities. When Durham was included, the listings were woefully incomplete or out of date. In conversation, the hyphenated airport name was almost always substituted for references to Durham or truncated to just Raleigh. That’s what can happen without good marketing. A community can cease to exist or have its brand violated.

It was common to be in direct conversation with Division staffers in those days and have them refer to “flying into Raleigh” or “here in Raleigh (when we were actually in Durham or Charlotte, etc.) Even when politely advised to the contrary the misstatements were so ingrained that once was not enough and it took dozens of corrections and dialing it up into a crucial confrontation.

Back then, even with excellent leadership there, there was perceptibly a very Raleigh-centric point of view at the Division although not purposefully exclusive. And outside of Raleigh, it seemed most of the publicity about the State back then centered on the mountains and beaches. Media on press trips often were brought into Raleigh and then taken to Durham features without ever noting the feature wasn’t located in Raleigh and then whisked off to the mountains or coast. It wasn’t grasped that a person might visit Durham itself or wouldn’t stay in Raleigh and then be whisked off to the mountains or beaches.

That North Carolina’s cities were often ignored is especially interesting since 80% of the State’s visitor spending was being generated by the Piedmont region and its city-destinations. In other states in which I had performed destination marketing, there was often a similar centrism, but overall people working for the state went out of their way to avoid giving preference or focus on the state capital because they represented the entire state regardless of where they lived or based.

So getting this squared away was a Durham priority. It made no sense to launch promotions for Durham if the State’s information essentially contradicted or neutralized those promotions.

It took a lot of repetition to break those habits and establish Durham as a destination. But what a difference. Particularly in Lynn Minges tenure as Division director, Durham has emerged not only as its own unique destination but one of the State’s most attractive destinations.

Division employees are now often the first to clarify that Raleigh-Durham is an airport--not a place--and it isn’t located in Raleigh.

This year the Division is featuring State ads shot at Brightleaf Square in Durham and video clips feature Durham assets like the African American Dance Ensemble to represent performing arts.

What a difference 20 years makes. Durham has come a long way.

Why DCVB Pursued Green Plus Certification?

2009-11-19T11:38:00.001-05:00

DCVB is pleased to learn it is the first destination marketing organization in the nation and one of the first two dozen overall to earn Green Plus certification from the Institute for Sustainable Development.

Essentially, this is a rigorous process evaluating organizations for not just how they treat the planet but how they treat their people and how they perform overall. All three are needed to be truly sustainable.

There are many reasons DCVB is often the first to peruse achievements like this. Here are just a handful:

Green is not new to DCVB. As early as 1990, soy-based inks and recycling were adopted right after start up as Durham’s official marketing agency in 1989.
Green activism is a key part of the overarching Durham brand that DCVB as the community’s marketing agency must deploy.
DCVB’s credo is “continuing and never-ending improvement.” Part of that is to embrace every new opportunity to excel.
Exposure is important and it helped that Duke University and the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce were early partners with the Institute to forge Green Plus although it has now rolled out in many states.
A rigorous, independent evaluation like Green Plus is a way to learn where an organization can improve as much as how it is excelling, and DCVB has always embraced these opportunities.
Green Plus certification is good marketing. As Durham’s marketing organization, it makes sense that DCVB should strive to epitomize the very brand values it promotes as part of the community’s personality and character.
DCVB has 3,000 visitor related businesses and organizations as stakeholders and it can now set an example as well as mentor these small organizations through Green Plus.

Green Plus certification, as well as full accreditation to the best practices of community marketing plus more than 120+ other awards and recognitions earned in the past 10 years alone, also symbolize to the community that it can be assured DCVB strives for and achieves best practices and performs at the highest level possible.

And that it will never let up or stand down.

The 20 Year Decline In Local News!

2009-11-18T12:43:00.001-05:00

Many dramatic changes have occurred during my time in Durham as head of the community’s marketing agency, e.g., Internet, Cell Phone/PDA Technology, Laptop Computers, Wireless Technology, Flat screen technology, Paperless Office, Websites, Green Technologies, 24/7 News, Global Information Systems, Desktop Graphics and Printer Prep, Smart Bombs, Social Media to name just a dozen.

But nothing has been more dramatic than the nationwide decline in the number of daily newspapers. The number of dailies reached a zenith around 1950, but declined by only 200 over the next forty years, mostly with the elimination of afternoon papers.

But another 200 dailies nationwide have been eliminated just since 1990.

This has occurred during the same period that television and radio news moved away from local news by expanding content to huge, largely unrelated coverage areas, I suspect to optimize ad revenues and sustainability. To me, the majority of so-called “local news” on local television stations hasn’t really been local for many “moons.”

So, losing local newspapers is leaving a vacuum in many places. Being “local” isn’t only about who owns it. It’s about the nature of its coverage. It’s about coverage by reporters and editors who live in and breathe the community. It’s about local community agenda. It’s about community reflection. It’s about community perspective.

And no, the newspaper in another community next door or across the state or nation, no matter how well intended, isn’t the same as a daily newspaper that focuses on a community without distraction.

But I’m one who believes as John Nesbitt wrote in Global Paradox that the more things go global, the more they will intensify at the local level.

And I wouldn’t be surprised to see the paradigm for local newspapers reverse in the near future.

The Carbon Economy

2009-11-16T13:00:00.001-05:00

This quick overview was shown at The Economist this week in D.C. It is a simple, graphical explanation of why this is such an important opportunity.

Aesthetics Ranks in Top Three Reasons Why Residents Love a Community

2009-11-13T11:41:00.005-05:00

A Gallup poll on behalf of the Knight Foundation is surveying residents of 26 metro areas of varying sizes across the US to determine what factors create the most attachment to community for residents, regardless of income, marital status or age group.

It turns out that the top three factors are:

Openness
Social Offerings
Aesthetics

It isn’t just aesthetics that is a surprise for many people, which is defined in the report as overall beauty and physical setting including parks, open spaces, trails, etc. It helps to ask people in a scientific survey because I’ll bet that based on news reports and public discourse, many people would have guessed public safety, transportation, etc.

By "openness" the survey is referring to what in Durham we call being “accepting.” It refers to a community’s overall openness to people from other countries, cultures, religions, lifestyles even and sexual orientation.

By "social offerings" the survey is referring to a vibrant cultural and entertainment centers, e.g., districts like Ninth Street and Brightleaf as well as an active downtown area overall.

Aesthetics isn’t a surprise to me nor are openness and social offerings. In public opinion polls, Durham residents always rank beautification and clean up as high priorities, although you wouldn’t know it from the low priority it has had with elected and other government officials over the years.

So the real question is why isn’t aesthetics a higher priority when it comes to local officials? More on that in a future blog on left brainers and right brainers.

What is it with Motorcycles and North Carolina?

2009-11-12T13:24:00.004-05:00

This aerial of North Durham countryside kind of says it all…

Is Community Pride A Given?

2009-11-11T10:27:00.000-05:00

Some people mistakenly think it is like cheerleading…that you generate it with a lot of hoopla or jumping up and down.

Most just take it for granted. Some use qualitative measures, but only a very few, like Durham, are on the forefront of scientifically measuring community pride as a benchmark.

Community marketing is beginning to catch on to the importance though. You can’t succeed at drawing sustainable visitation to a community if the residents who live there don’t deliver on the brand promise…at least not for long.

So 86% of Durham residents are proud of their community but is that standard low or high?

In my personal experience, that is extremely high. Now, thanks to some information gleaned from a Gallup Poll of 26 metros of varying sizes across the country, a benchmark is beginning to emerge. Gallup is posing the question as part of a three year “Soul of the Community” survey to find what makes residents “attach” to a community.

It turns out that Durham is truly exceptional when it comes to community pride. Compared to 86% in Durham, the average pride level for the 26 metros is 38%. The average of the six metros most comparable to Durham is 42%. For Charlotte and its surrounding metro area, the average is 43%.

So community pride in Durham is roughly twice as prevalent as these benchmarks.

Turns out the remainder, on average, are largely split between those who are uncertain or “not proud,” four and five times respectively of the proportion of Durham residents giving those responses.

The reason Durham excels in this measure is certainly not because it gets preferential treatment from the news media or that there are better cheerleaders here or that officials impose it.

To me it is simple. Durham has a unique and readily apparent cultural identity. It draws visitors and newcomers for whom that identity and its related values, emotional benefits and core strengths are a good fit and then it delivers on the brand.

But Durham can’t take this for granted. If Durham doesn’t foster that unique identity and resist the strong forces that would homogenize it, it will get caught up in trying to be like everywhere else and lose what’s special here.

You may not be able to create or generate community pride per se, but you sure can destroy the things that stimulate it.

The incredible level of community pride in Durham which has stayed consistently high now for nearly two decades of measurement is a tremendous asset and one that deserves nurturing.

Just ask the nearly 40% who are newcomers to Durham over that span.