Nurturing Authenticity of Place

On a warm Sunday morning twenty-five years ago I was sitting on the ledge of what was then a Duke Power appliance store near my temporary office in the restored Kress Building looking down Main Street in Durham, North Carolina.

This was my first week of spearheading what was my third and final community-destination marketing start up.

I felt an incredible sense of urgency but I also knew by that half-way point in my career, that to leapfrog much more established competition we had to do things differently.

To me that meant not only differentiating Durham as place to visit but differentiating the very way we marketed it to potential visitors,  It would need to be very different or highly evolved from anything I had done in my previous two communities.

Peers then, and far too many now, thought that this was weird. The prevalent mantra was an approach best described as hyperactive, cookie-cutter follow the leader.

But two resources I had read a few years earlier kept ringing in my ears - an essay on “sense of place” by Dr. Wallace Stegner, who coined that term, and the definitive primer on strategy by Dr. Michael Palmer.

Later I would conduct studies to drill down more completely into Durham’s personality, but to begin with, start ups have to skim characteristics on the fly.

Running through my mind that day as I looked down Main Street were Durham values and personality characteristics I had already sensed.  In marketing parlance this is called honing in on a community’s brand, the nexus of internal and external perceptions.

The first apt descriptor to come to mind regarding Durham was genuine, real.  Quickly following that came diverse and eclectic which morphed to textured and finally, authentic, the core trait.

Few communities back then valued, let along exhibited those traits, preferring instead, a rush to replicate others in the geography of anywhere.  If they did any branding at all, they confused it with aspirations.

But I didn’t have to be in Durham but a few hours and days to know these were among Durham’s core, almost temporal values.

Later research confirmed and deepened snap judgments made when that’s all time would allow.

Being able to discern those traits probably came from pre-school explorations around our ancestral ranch, or perhaps gleaned while earning a degree in history.  Maybe it was just plain luck or a combination of all three.

While I quickly tested these descriptors on two community elders, individuals with roots going back before Durham’s founding, I already had some idea of what they meant in other contexts such as when a decade earlier the late Dr. Christopher Lasch had written about authenticity in a social context.

But I became a student of “authenticity,” particularly Durham’s, where it was so deeply rooted compared to other communities.  There had to be a reason they did things so differently from its founding, such as those neo-Romanesque chimneys on historic warehouses here.

In 1992, a paper I wrote at BYU for a folklore class in 1971 was footnoted in more serious studies, and while alerting me, my professor faxed me a copy of an article written that year by Dr. Regina Bendix entitled, “The Scientific Search For Authenticity.”

Five years later, I snapped up her new book, In Search of Authenticity, to learn more about the “longing” for it spurred by cultural influences such as modernization.

This led me to believe that is what motivated Durham’s founders to embed it so deeply here.

It was a counterbalance to the tobacco, textile and other factories we are repurposing today for the creative class.

It also explains why, after creating some of the world’s largest trusts and revolutionizing North Carolina’s economy after the Civil War, Durham turned to the preservation of historic sites only a few decades after the founding.

I knew that if we couldn’t trace authenticity, we wouldn’t be able to explain it, nor would we be be able fulfill our organization’s charge to be the guardian of that essence of Durham’s sense of place.

The term “authentic” wasn’t applied much to other places until a decade after my insight when at the end of that century, historical novelist Dr. Michael Crichton inserted a prescient line in his 1999 book Timeline, about a team of historians and archeologists who time travel back to 1357.

The billionaire Robert Doniger, a character in the novel who facilitates the expedition as a means to infuse authenticity into a tourist attraction utters the line:

“Authenticity will be the buzzword of the twenty-first century.”

Two years later, as if on cue, authenticity surfaced in research published by Dr. Richard Florida describing places most appealing to the creative class, a bellwether to community economic vitality.

I still remember the blank stares I got from two economic developer friends when I read them the passage about the creative class being drawn most to “authentic…experiences” in “authentic, indigenous and organic venues.”

Back then, while fronting for business interests, supply-side economic developers (tourism is demand-side) were in the midst of a more than two-decade frenzy to push for public cultural facilities such as convention centers and particularly performing arts centers as a a means to, in turn, more easily leverage capital from lenders.

In the pretense of spurring development, nationwide they pushed through $16 billion in arts facilities alone during this period, more than half on performing arts centers, with the greatest increase occurring  in the four years between 1998 and 2001.

Analysis shows that it paid off handsomely for adjacent developments but had negligible impact beyond.  Later I will explain why this binge had the unintended consequence of hollowing out so much community authenticity across the country.

In the 2000s, “oh-that-too” marketers ubiquitously tried to obliterate the meaning of authenticity with phony applications.

To the rescue came a 2006 speech/essay entitled The Geography of Somewhere by Dr. Scott Russell Sanders, followed a year later by the definitive book entitled, Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, by James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II.

They summarize why it is so hard to communicate authenticity, because it is often perceived by what it isn’t.  It isn’t commercial. It isn’t fake.  It isn’t monetary, etc.

But derived from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Gilmore and Pine distill what they call the two principles of authenticity, applied here to communities:  An authentic place is true to itself and strives to be always true to what it says it is.

Authenticity isn’t created, its nurtured.  Working with researcher John Henry of H2R Market Research, PGAV Destinations, a company that has created or revitalized attractions visited by 75 million people each year, has conducted the definitive analysis of perceptions of authenticity.

This included in-depth, nationwide research into the two-thirds of visitors who participate in attractions, which tourism textbooks define as:

historic sites/museums, parks/preserves/botanical gardens, performing arts, zoos/aquariums, art galleries/museums, amusement/theme parks, sports (spectator and participatory,) festivals/events, gaming and of course shopping and dining.

By nearly 4-to-1, travelers prefer destinations that are real and authentic over those that are fantasy, but fewer than 1 in 3 destinations visited in the previous year met those qualifications.

However, people view authenticity on a continuum with historical and natural attractions most authentic and, for example, performing arts (especially musical theater-sorry Broadway) as least authentic, with things like science centers and botanical gardens in the middle.

Each type of attraction also fits on an authenticity continuum with independent-locally owned stores most authentic while malls and formula stores least authentic.

Local-chef owned restaurants serving locally grown foods including heirloom veggies are most authentic whiled national restaurant chains are least authentic.

Those least authentic must strive to let a community’s authenticity rub off, such as The Streets at Southpoint, a super regional mall in Durham did with faux architectural details.

Of course, communities need a mix but to retain appeal as authentic, they must vigilantly manage the mix so that things most real and authentic are never taking a back seat to things fantasy.

That is, if like Durham, they are fortunate to have any left.

Trying to straddle is a sure way to becoming Anywhere, USA.

Fostering – Framing - Fabricating Authenticity

Two weeks ago while I was relaxing lakeside in the Northern Rockies, a message from a friend popped up making sure I had seen a post earlier entitled “Is authenticity authentic?”

Perhaps he wanted to be sure I read it because he noticed that I tried in an essay a month earlier about authenticity as a continuum,  to briefly touch on some recent research revealing where along that continuum public opinion places various tourist activities.

The data showed that “attraction” visitors overwhelmingly prefer authenticity in the communities they visit, including those who participate in activities visitors rate as least authentic, e.g. sports, musical theater, concerts, theme parks, casinos, etc.

The research drew my attention because it was conducted by PGAV Destinations, a company that since 1971 has helped tourist attractions that fall along the least authentic part of the continuum be more appealing including, well, embracing authenticity.

Another way to look at the data is that more than 86% of attraction visitors view natural attractions like Grand Canyon as authentic compared to the beach at 49.9%.

More than 29% of attraction visitors viewed Biltmore Estate here in North Carolina as authentic (the parts that are still historical such as the house itself rate higher,) shows on Broadway at 18.4% and Six Flags theme parks at 8%.

The message was clear.  Regardless of what may prompt a visit, visitors find authenticity the most compelling attribute.

Coincidentally, as that message popped up, I was finishing an incredible book entitled Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity in preparation for a stop I planned on my way home from a cross country trip in Nashville, home of the still vibrant 1892 Ryman Auditorium.

The author, a Vanderbilt sociologist who recently passed on, reminds us that “authenticity is not inherent” in something deemed authentic.  It is “designated authentic” by a “socially-agreed upon construct,” another reason PGAV’s research is so insightful.

He continues by noting that this agreed upon construct is “continuously negotiated in an ongoing interplay” between various interests and perception.

One of the pleasures of retirement is reflection, something researchers call “metacognition,” a higher level cognition that developmental psychologists labeled as such in 1976, just after I took the helm of my first community destination marketing organization in Spokane.

It is essentially the ability or process of evaluating our own thinking, a form of self-appraisal.  When faulty, it results in the overrating of the influence “our wonderful selves” have on outcomes.

When carefully calibrated researchers have pinpointed reflection as key to learning, innovation, achievement and success.

But I find it interesting in retirement (and on long cross country ventures) as a means to sift through the archeology of my influences. 

Never, I have found, is any success with which I was credited ever due to prescience or “thunderbolt” insights, at least not on my part.  Nearly always it is the result of the good fortune to stumble upon connections and then make use of the patterns.

For instance, what made me connect the strategy of authenticity four decades before it reached buzz word status, as a means to differentiate the three communities I represented and leapfrog competitors?

Conventional wisdom, until recently, was to focus instead on building mega-facilities such as stadiums, civic/convention centers and theaters in a way that we know now tragically makes communities less and less differentiated and appealing.

I was certainly involved in my share of mega-facilities during my career in visitor centered economic and cultural development including three convention centers, three performing arts centers, two stadium/arenas, three museums and numerous other historic and natural interpretive sites.

But what was it that gave me an awareness of the importance of trying to gingerly and coherently feather them into each community’s cultural ecology striving with various levels of success to nestle them into indigenous sense of place while doing everything possible to safeguard authenticity?

Genius? Hah!

Was it growing up on an ancestral cattle ranch and exploring forests, an old family cemetery, and discarded artifacts?  Or the presence of the Tetons looming across the Henry’s Fork?

That may have fostered a proclivity but my first formal brush with the concept of authenticity came in my second semester of college, years before I would back into a lifelong career in community branding and marketing.

An ACT score had pushed me ahead a year in history and one of the readings in a 1967 class syllabus was a book penned earlier that decade by Dr. Daniel Boorstin entitled The Image – A Guide To Pseudo-Events In America.

Authenticity has always been important in historical analysis where its relativity first came to light.  More than fifty years ago, Boorstin was already lamenting the threat of mainstream commercialism to what we known now as sense of place.

Dr. Boorstin researched and wrote this book, his first of more than twenty, after watching the famous television debate between Presidential candidates Richard Nixon and John Kennedy.

His summary of “the dark arts” of advertising and public relations fostered a skepticism that may have been why in my eventual career in marketing, I was one of the first in my field to embrace data-driven marketing decisions and recognize the inherent lack of credibility in advertising.

The third chapter of his book, “From Traveler to Tourist: The Lost Art of Travel,” is still one of the best overviews of the historical foundations of visitor-centered economic and cultural development.

He reminds us all that the inherent value of tourism goes much, much deeper than superficial commercial outcomes such as “heads in beds,” or “butts in seats,” or “feet on the street” or even community revitalization.

At its essence, tourism foremost should be a means preserve and leverage what is truly unique, distinct and authentic to destinations.  And in the words of Dr. Scott Russell Sanders, it should be an educational tool to “preserve and celebrate the commonwealth of the place visited as well as the place to which each visitor returns.”

Boorstin who also forsook a career in the law to instead find history useful for varied career paths may have planted the seed that led me within a decade of reading his book to realize that I was more suited and could make a bigger difference in the field of visitor-centered economic and cultural development.

But Boorstin’s influence on me was not in a vacuum.  I literally came of age during the sixteen years of “See the USA in your Chevrolet.”  “Smokey the Bear” and Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson had by then each made patriotic pleas for Americans to travel.

Remember, barely half of Americans had cars when I was born in 1948, less than two decades after mass leisure travel had moved into the mainstream.  By the time I was attending that 1967 history class at Brigham Young University, nearly three-fourths of Americans had cars.

Another reading required in that history course was written by Dr. Earl S. Pomeroy a professor who coincidentally had taught for several years prior to the publication of In Search of the Golden West: The Tourist in Western America, at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill near where I now live.

Dr. Pomeroy delved into the complex process by which authenticity is negotiated when the “toured upon” assume roles that reflect the perceptions of the West held by visitors from the East.

In the words of Dr. Jerry Frank in a recent doctoral paper entitled, Marketing the Mountains: An Environmental History of Tourism, these perceptions were based on the “testimony of television.”

I may have been hell-bent while taking those history classes in college on being a lawyer but I can see in reflection now how much tourism and the importance of authenticity has seeped into my consciousness.

By 1973, a job in community marketing was my means of working my way through law school at Gonzaga, when I came across a paper by a newly-minted Ph.D. with expertise in anthropology, sociology, geography and landscape architecture entitled, “Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings.”

Within two years, I had exchanged careers and was head of that DMO.  Dr. Dean MacCannell had evolved that paper into a book entitled Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, and I found myself standing on a floating dock one night (shown in image above) with Mike Kobluk watching the sun set over a historic clock tower.

Mike is my one degree of separation from both the singer-songwriter John Denver who was at the peak of his popularity back then and Roger McGuinn, founder of The Byrds, popular for a decade by then (Mr. Tambourine Man, Turn, Turn, Turn.)

Kobluk was co-founder of the popular 1960’s Chad Mitchell Trio (that’s Mike on the Four Winds solo part.)  McGuinn played backup to the trio and Denver performed as a singer for three years, crediting his social and political awareness to that time as well as ideas in songwriting until his tragic death in 1997.

But that night, I was the newly minted exec of Spokane’s community destination marketing organization and after serving as director of performing arts for the Expo ‘74 World’s Fair, Mike was beginning a nearly three decade career as manager for the 2,700 performing arts center and adjoining convention center looming behind us.

The $12 million facilities were a gift from the state after the six month exposition, but stretching before us that dusk was the true legacy of the event, a $117 million restoration of Spokane’s downtown riverfront including two islands splitting its remarkable falls.

I had cut my community marketing teeth with a front row seat to the benefits and drawbacks of mega-events, such as that but we were awestruck by the fabulous park left when all of the exposition facilities were clear away.

As Mike and I looked out over the 100-acre city-center park, he quietly nodded and in that melodic voice uttered something like, “Spokane may have just been the center of the entertainment world for six months, but this park is now the centerpiece of its true visitor appeal.”

Within three years, I had moved on to head my second of three DMOs in Anchorage where his observation that night was still fresh in my mind as I read Dr. Wallace Stegner’s essay on “sense of place,” the first time the term was used.

Mike’s background may have been on the least authentic end of the continuum but he connected the dots again for me that night about the primacy of things authentic.  He definitely had influence on me.

Nearly forty years after his comment, a few years after I retired from that lifelong career in Durham, NC and a decade after Mike had retired from cultural facilities management, two friends of mine in North Carolina happened to conduct research for that DMO I had helped jumpstart in Spokane.

Mike was right.  Visitors not only cited scenic beauty as the destination’s top attribute but overwhelmingly credited the Riverfront Park as the number one attraction not just there but throughout the region.

The Riverfront Park was perceived seven times more powerful than elements found less authentic.

This dovetails with PGAV’s research nationwide.

That research also documents that destinations considered real or authentic tend to enjoy better brand perception, higher satisfaction and greater intent-to-return, but even among attraction/event visitors, fewer than 4-in-10 describe their last trip as authentic (real, natural, original or historic.)

It may be a buzz word now, and my ongoing study and connection more serendipity than destiny, but I still come across a book a year that deepens my understanding including one entitled Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society that came to my attention as I retired and refreshed my memory to some of my earliest influences.

But it is clear that authenticity is still the most powerful strategy for both appeal and differentiations and history is the leading indicator.

Instead, far too many destinations have destroyed their authenticity, irretrievably cannibalizing it in the words of Dr. MacCannell for the undifferentiating “historylessness” and far less appealing commercial and fantastical tourism features scrambling to monopolize attention.

Authenticity and inauthenticity may be relative but the evidence shows  that the fewer than four-in-ten communities with any “real” remaining that are also willing to make its preservation and promotion a priority will be the only ones with appeal to visitors, even those seeking fantasy.

This in a future where all others will have reached equilibrium of “sameness” and settled for simulation.

If not already too late, which will your community be?

Wearing Symbols of Our Longing for Realness

There are other types consumption other than just destination travel that signals how deeply rooted the quest for sense of place is in many of us.

One of the examples I will touch on in this essay is with direct mail catalogues for apparel and accessories including why those that seize on authenticity aren’t just a trend.

Thumb through one from Orvis, J.L. Powell or Territory Ahead the next time it arrives, and look at how carefully the backdrops reflect the “realness” of places in hopes that it rubs off on the products.

It is why when some lose this connection with realness and roots when they fall under private equity owners and then have to scramble to get it back such as has periodically seemed to happen over the years with Eddie Bauer, Lands End and Woolrich, even L.L. Bean and Plow & Hearth.

Drifting away from roots and authenticity is usually first manifest online not because the design and functionality isn’t good but because the sites begin to take on a generic quality.

This is far too evident in my former field of community destination marketing.  Even those depicting communities that still retain aspects of sense of place are not immune.

In fact, the drift of marketing materials toward generic may be a sort of graphical “Freudian slip,” unconsciously betraying the deterioration of the “there” there in a particular community.

Research shows that even the so-called “selfie-generation” holds authenticity as one of the top five attributes for brands of any type.  This is inspiring some historic brands to return to its roots with its 1816 catalogue.

The founder of a newer entry in that apparel and gear market is Guideboat Co. and he comes by his sense of authenticity honestly.

Steven Gordon also founded Restoration Hardware when he was restoring an old Queen Anne Victorian house in Eureka, California more than three decades ago.

The inspiration emerged as he started collecting source material for authentic items such as door knobs and then began finding similar emblems of authenticity for other folks.

In 1980, Gordon opened the first Restoration Hardware store in Eureka’s Old Town District which is where I saw it during a stop while driving up along the Pacific route linking the old Spanish missions in September 2001, the day before 9/11.

But I was learning about the company in reverse, spotting the store first along 23rd Avenue in the village-like Northwest District of Portland, Oregon where my daughter lived during the mid to late 1990s.

The year after that 2001 road trip up U.S. Route 101 is when one opened where I live in Durham, North Carolina at The Streets at Southpoint, and by then the chain was a long way from its Eureka roots.

In 2005, Gordon left the company for others to run.  In his words, he missed the trenches but I think he was also beginning to miss the link to authenticity.

Lacking the authenticity sensibilities of Starbucks, Restoration Hardware closed that first store in 2008 just before I retired, stating ironically that customers could find alternatives in the suburbs.

The company’s stores were rapidly becoming high-end design studios for authenticity “wanna-bees.”

For a time after he left RH, Gordon ran Sundance, a lifestyle direct mail catalogue that had been started in 1989 by actor/director Robert Redford and named for the mountain resort he developed using sense of place principles up Provo Canyon from BYU.

I would still like to find a photographic essay book I saw in Salt Lake City while visiting to attend my daughter’s college graduation.  It was centered around quotes from Norman Maclean’s sense-of-place masterpiece, A River Runs Through It.

But ever since it was taken public a decade after Redford imbued its sensibilities, the catalogue has strayed far, far away from that sense of authenticity.

There are some things private equity firms just can’t grasp.

One of them seems to be the importance of sense of rootedness and authenticity that research shows is appealing to at least 7-in-10 consumers and preferred as a backdrop by the remainder.

So unable to sustain or transfer sensibilities that come natural to him, some say from his background growing up in the Adirondacks, Gordon started from scratch last year, literally going back to his roots as an entrepreneur with an uncanny grasp of sense of place.

He started Guideboat Co., first by restoring two 19th century buildings including an original mercantile store and an old hardware store followed by a direct mail counterpart filled with sense of place images.

Business associations such as chambers of commerce often struggle to understand sense of place which is the forte of community marketing counterparts with that as a focus.

As one exec in Eureka noted when stunned by shuttering of the first Restoration Hardware, for many the demise of sense of place is an inevitable “national trend” 

But sense of place or being authentic and real, is not a trend.  Americans have been longing for rootedness and heritage since the day we first steps on these shores more than 500 years ago.

The idea of clothing that looks vintage or pre-worn goes back to the 1950s, a fashion so prevalent that it is sure to be a source of heartburn for archeologists one day as they seek to discern what is really authentic from our yearning for authenticity.

DMOs still clinging to sense of place in the communities they promote understand that marketing a brand is important but in the words of Starbucks’ relentless CEO Howard Schultz, “it is authenticity that makes them last.”

When we first cranked up community marketing for Durham more than 25 years ago, one of the most popular publications we distributed via the front desks in corporations and other local businesses as a means to encourage visitor circulation was the Downtown Durham Walking Tour.

The most common comment we heard back from surveys was that it was cool because the urban village-like character and scale of downtown made it seem so familiar to visitors.

In essence it evoked where they grew up or felt they had grown up.

That it was all deserted and boarded up back then is urban myth.

The fact is, it wasn’t.  Festivals frequently filled the streets on weekends.  Durham Bulls games filled the old DAP.  Thousands walked the streets to and from businesses and agencies each day.

One side of Main Street rivaled Brightleaf Square for nightlife, and people who worked four miles away at RTP were already populating second story lofts.

There were numerous artist studios Downtown including one for an artist named Tim O. Walker who decorated store fronts below his downtown Durham loft with modernistic furniture designs before leaving for Miami where he took restoration and custom cabinetry to the level of sculpture.

Another had been converted into a boutique theater that was packed for micro productions such as Greater Tuna, a la the way performers used storefronts down Mason Street in San Francisco at the time.

A brewery and a ravioli factory were building on Durham’s already emerging local foods movement.

But two of the most popular downtown businesses back then were places like that first Restoration Hardware, and drew crowds of hobby restorationists from as far as several surrounding states.

Rick Morgan has a similar operation here now called The Reuse Warehouse taking to an entirely new level what his parents who own Morgan Imports, did for decades on the side.

Steven Gordon would feel right at home there but there isn’t room now for that kind of business in Downtown Durham as it sheds its realness in exchange for higher property values.

Developers who fancy themselves as resurrectionists don’t have the restorationist sensibilities of the Morgan’s.  City planners and permit issuers would be well advised to have Richard vet all downtown projects for sense of place and authenticity.

He grew up just across the tracks from where Morgan Imports is today in the historic Durham Laundry complex.  After attending Duke, he served in Vietnam.

When he got home in 1969 he established a gift shop like the ones he had seen on leave in Okinawa.  It was in the former Stephenson-Wilson Pontiac Dealership which was on Morgan St. where the entrance to parking for Brightleaf Square is now.

The building burned and the store became an anchor in Brightleaf, which had been created in 1980 from two historic tobacco warehouses, before the Morgan’s renovated for adaptive reuse first the old Laundry and the building where Parker & Otis is now.

The first time I met him, he took me to see a stash of “heart of pine” flooring he had rescued from warehouses being demolished.

Richard also represents the heart Durham’s sense of place and someone Stephen Gordon would feel right at home with.

Being Authentic

One of the things often observed about Durham, even by news media in nearby communities is that this community has a soul. It is also called real and authentic. There is a cool article by Bill Breen in the May issue of Fast Company magazine about authenticity from a brand standpoint. Below are some things I gleaned. They helped me understand and put into words why Durham is authentic.

What does it take to be authentic?

A sense of place
Authenticity comes from a place we can connect with.

A strong point of view
Authenticity also emerges from people with a deep passion for what they are doing.

Serving a larger purpose
Consumers believe every brand has an ulterior motive. Authenticity is when a brand is convincing that the motive is a byproduct of a larger purpose.

Integrity
Authenticity comes to a brand that is what it says it is… its actions align with the story it tells through communications.

How do you stay authentic even as you get big?

Ubiquity may not be toxic to authenticity, but it certainly dilutes it.

Can you be authentic when you’re trying to be authentic?

Warmth can wear out its welcome and feel contrived if it isn’t real.

A brand doesn’t feel real when it overtly tries to make itself real.

Can you be cool and still be authentic?

To maintain its integrity a brand must remain true to its values. And yet to be cool, a brand must be as dynamic as change itself. To be authentic, these must be reconciled.

What’s real are the experiences and connections brands allow us to make.

The Surprising Market Potential For Going Mainstream

In this essay I’m going to touch on the proportion of the traveling public that prefers chain stores, which is, coincidentally, the same proportion drawn to mainstream attractions.

This proportion of travelers are the aim of communities that seem bent on surrendering differentiation and sense of place to generic development and mainstream facilities and events.

Surveys have shown repeatedly over the past 20 years that residents of Durham, North Carolina, where I live, identify a museum of local history as the community’s #1 cultural facility need.

In part, this may be due to Durham residents historically placing a higher value on authenticity of sense of place.  Studies show that on the continuum of authenticity, attractions such as history museums rank as among the most authentic.

But here, too, some developers, as they have across the country, often use their considerable clout with local government to push instead for mainstream facilities, which are rated in surveys of the general public as the least authentic on that spectrum.

A majority of communities long ago surrendered distinctiveness driven by a relentless envy to mimic other places and, in doing so, made them indistinguishable as just one of many.

As Seth Godin noted in a recent post entitled, The Average, “Progress is almost always a series of choices, an inexorable move toward mediocrity, or its opposite.”

Even among advocates for proposed local history museums such as Durham’s, it has not been uncommon to even hear some advocates dismissing more authentic aspects such as artifacts and collections while promoting digital alternatives.

Ironically this would, in the view of many, make museums, well, less authentic.

Museologists such as digital specialist Dr. Ross Parry view digital not as the end of older technologies such as display cases and labels, for instance, but as an extension.

In fact, Dr. Parry has contended for at least the last few years that museums are already “post digital,” meaning that this technology is now “normative” or mainstream.

It has become what University of Chicago cultural policy analyst Gwendolyn Rugg terms as “assimilated, embedded, naturalized.”

In fact, I am persuaded by an essay that was posted here in America about the same time as Dr. Parry’s declaration which eloquently makes the case that on the authenticity continuum, which is always relative, artifacts will always be more authentic.

Unfortunately, over the eight decades since a museum of local Durham history was first proposed, many priceless artifacts and even potential collections have vanished.

Communities face forces that likewise see development as the end of one thing and the beginning of another.  This is why they so easily dismiss nearly temporal place-based assets as they replace them with mainstream palaces.

It isn’t just a portion of developers and architects as well as chambers of commerce, destination marketers and officials which have become mainstream sycophants, but especially financial institutions and chains that hedge loans by insisting on cookie-cutter developments.

Ironically, when it comes to appealing to travelers as well as residents who are stayers vs. just boomers, these mainstreamers are forcing a majority of communities now into mediocrity and a future with very limited appeal.

So what do the numbers say about which is most precious and popular, authentic or mainstream, when it comes to positioning a community to generate visitor-centric economic and cultural development, which was my now-concluded career?

Is it really just “six of one or half dozen of the other” or do mainstreamers have the advantage they seem to think?

According to studies, about 1/5th of travelers actually prefer to frequent experiences at the less authentic end of the scale such as mainstream events, sports or performing arts.

This compares to 73% who prefer real or authentic experiences such as museums, historic sites and natural areas.

Visitors are also very clear when it comes to what is authentic. 

The data show that destinations and attractions considered real, authentic and genuine have “historical truth.”  These are places that are “original in origin or design,” places that are “natural” and “unique,” “non-commercial.”

Researchers have also found that authenticity is also not a moniker easily attained.  For example, fewer than half perceive the beach or science centers or aquariums to be authentic.

Interestingly, even 74% of those who experience casinos, which are considered the least authentic on the spectrum, preferred real and authentic to fantasy or mainstream experiences.

Another indicator of the relative popularity of communities that have surrendered sense of place and authenticity to emulate mainstream comes from retail studies.

They show that 29.5% of consumers prefer to buy from mainstream national or regional chain stores.

So it appears that surrendering sense of place and authenticity for mainstream means a community has actually narrowed its appeal to somewhere between just 21% and 29% of Americans.

Meanwhile, the few communities that still struggle valiantly to differentiate as well as protect and foster a distinctive sense of place, appeal to between 73% and 80% of Americans.

Developers, architects, financial institutions and politicians should take note. It pays to foster sense of place and authentic and real attributes. In other words, to list only a handful:

On balance, always favor the real and genuine over the mainstream;

Encourage architecture with respect for local settings, neighborhoods and indigenous districts rather than cookie-cutter designs or franchise/ego architecture;

Value an indigenous cultural ecosystem over events and facilities that may be so-called “world class” by mainstreamers, which are certain only to erode differentiation and homogenize sense of place;

Always favor scenic preservation, tree canopy and natural areas over impervious surface; and

Listen to residents who are “stayers” vs. “boomers” when it comes to safeguarding sense of place and community character.  Aim your appeal toward travelers and relocating or expanding businesses who value place based assets.

Two Hallmarks of a Worthy Consultant

A well-researched and documented concept such as “authenticity” is often misunderstood when executives such as many in my former field of community marketing begin to salt and pepper it into use as a buzz word, rather than understanding its real meaning.

They are easy to spot because they haven’t really read the research behind the term, hoping their community can bluff visitor prospects by liberally adding it throughout its communication resume.

The thing about authenticity, though, is that to consumers it is not a buzz word making it easy for them to detect a fraud.

Linked is an article forwarded by a friend of mine about how Asheville, North Carolina is losing its authenticity.  A three and a half hour drive east, Downtown Durham too may also already be on the backside of that tipping point.

Having destination marketing organizations with a good sense of what makes these communities authentic is not enough if even the best intended developer and public officials carelessly enable destructive mainstream forces instead.

Soon the existence of authenticity in North Carolina may be extinct except for history museums, greatly diminishing its appeal in the eyes of travelers including more than 80% of those who visit fantasy attractions and events.

Few DMOs and even fewer consultants to DMOs have actually read this research about authenticity which was conducted in 2009.

Bill Geist is one of only three consultants to DMOs that I recommend, but it isn’t because he was necessarily a visionary during the nearly nine years he was a DMO exec or because we are friends or because we have always seen eye to eye.

I recommend Bill because in the twenty years since he ran a DMO, he has never stopped learning or repopulating what he had learned to others.  He understands that it isn’t what a community DMO knows or has accomplished but how eager it is to learn that makes all the difference.

Innovation is another attribute that is overused but those who merely salt and pepper it into resumes or initiatives are easy to detect.

Even fewer truly grasp “disruptive innovation.”

According to the Harvard business professor, entrepreneur and consultant who coined the term more than 15 years ago, a “disruptive innovation is not a breakthrough that makes good products a lot better.”  Those are sustaining innovations.

A disruptive innovation transforms a product or service to be more affordable and accessible, giving a much larger population access to them.

When Clay Christensen and I briefly overlapped as classmates at BYU the only computer programming we learned to do was creating punch cards for the university’s huge mainframe computer.

By the time Christensen coined disruptive innovation, the organizations I led had been using desktop computers since the early 1980s.

By the time my career was coming in for a landing, Steve Jobs, who wrote about powerful influence of Clay’s book, had put that computing power in a smartphone.

What distinguishes Bill Geist and Clay Christensen is their humility, a prerequisite to lifelong learning.  Consultants who believe they know it all are a dime a dozen and worth even less.

Christensen famously tells the story of getting a call from a notoriously gruff and impatient Andy Grove at Intel, asking the professor to fly out and explain the theory of disruptive innovation to his execs because he was too busy to read.

When he arrived, crises had arisen and Christensen was told that the execs didn’t have time to even listen to the theory so he would need to just tell them what they needed to do in the ten minutes available.

Pivotal is that Christensen held his ground and insisted they listen to an explanation of the theory because he didn’t know much about Intel but that the theory of Disruptive Innovation would have an opinion.

Grove listened and made the connections.

Christensen eloquently describes the challenge of a consultant.  You can’t be suckered into just telling an organization what to do because there is no way a consultant can ever know enough about an organization or community to do that.

The value of a consultant is to show you how to think differently.  Data can only tell you about the past and help illuminate patterns and connections.  But strategic direction is about connecting data, connections and patterns with a good theory.

A consultant can only teach managers how to think differently and see “through the lens of a theory into the future, you can actually see it very clearly.”

All of this is to say that if you think you don’t have time to read and think about the data behind something like community authenticity or delude yourself into applying buzz words as a short cut, you have no business masquerading as a community marketing exec.

Nor will consultants, even those few who are the best, be able to connect the dots.

Grasping for Coolness and Authenticity

There is a thin line between gritty and neglect.  There is an even thinner line between “cool” and “bobo-land” – a term David Brooks coined for “bourgeois bohemians” in his hilarious book published a few years ago.  Downtown Asheville is worried about this; downtown Durham should be too.

This occurred to me recently as I walked the streets of City Center during the resurrected Centerfest, which used to be the longest-running street arts fair in North Carolina, until it took a year’s hiatus.  Now it has returned to the geography of its roots to start anew after having been banished a few years ago to a much-condensed location due to a street amenities make-over.

The word “cool” is frequently overused to describe far too many places, but I think it fits downtown Durham which was self-proclaimed as the place to find it by advocates a few years ago, a description that nosed under the umbrella of Durham’s successful overarching brand which was distilled to stretch over the entire community including not only downtown but Research Triangle Park, the universities and its distinct neighborhoods.

But the important question for downtown may be: For how long?  “Cool” by definition really can’t be choreographed, but it is fragile and can oh so easily be lost.

Dr. Richard Greenwald, a Dean and a professor of sociology and history at St. Joseph’s College in New York summed it up perfectly when he wrote for The Atlantic Cities – Place Matters about neighborhoods that:

“the shifts in cool are a ceaseless urban effort to grasp at authenticity.”

Of course, he wasn’t referring to just buildings.  Actually, downtown Durham’s eclectic architecture including old tobacco factories has always been “cool” and always will be.

The “cool” and authenticity Greenwald is describing is about the socio-economic mix of people and businesses and try as they may, advocates, developers and building managers have a hard time sustaining that mix.

Not everyone has the sensibility of a Bob Chapman to what is required. Chapman, a Duke grad, is helping to rehabilitate the NoCo District (NOrth of COrporation) along the far north fringe of downtown.  He and his wife Vicky Patton, also a Duke grad are friends and I owe them an apology for my glaring oversight of them on my list of Durham’s Definitive 1970s Brain-Gain.

Sustaining authenticity is the trickiest part of neighborhood revitalization.  “Authenticity” as Greenwald writes, is “a defining cultural talisman.  Knowing what is real and true, in a mass-produced world, gives one status, or cultural capital.”

Most people know it when they see it, but preserving it is the hardest part.

No entity deserves more credit for the progress of downtown than Downtown Durham Inc., unless it is the developers who have taken the risks and City and County officials who provided infrastructure and back-end incentives.

But it is also the sustained awareness that began much earlier such as that generated by organizations such as the Durham Arts Council’s Centerfest and the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau which began driving external media and resident awareness as well as copious amounts of visitor traffic before any of the other progress took hold.

It has definitely been a broad partnership and it required many decades of perseverance by all involved.

But in addition to sustaining the momentum, what should have begun to keep all of these entities “up at night” over the last several years now is how they can ensure that they don’t go too far…how they can sustain just the right mix of people that will keep downtown Durham “real” and “gritty” and “cool” and “authentic.”

Visitors and BOBOs are an important part of the mix, but if not balanced with equal amounts of socio-economic diversity, downtown Durham won’t be “cool” for long.

The threat in this challenge won’t come from other communities but from the by-products of downtown’s success.

Differentiation Requires Continuity

For reasons other than rain, it was gloomy when I made the 15-hour drive from BYU up to east of Seattle where my family had been living for more than a year.

In 1970, my dad was just finishing the liquidation of Philips Petroleum holdings as the company prepared to abandon the west coast following an antitrust ruling.

Adding to its gloom, Phillips also detected it was under investigation for illegal campaign contributions to 65 congressional candidates and two two Presidents.

Even more depressing, Seattle, less than eight years after opening its futuristic World’s Fair, was in deep in recession with Boeing alone shedding what would be nearly 60,000 jobs.

Nearly 1-in-5 residents were unemployed.

In April 1971, two realtors rented a roadside billboard alongside Sea-Tac Airport for $160 and tried to lighten the mood with a now famous message  reading, “Will the last person leaving SEATTLE – Turn out the lights.”

Amusing now, it wasn’t at all funny to the tens of thousands unemployed and tens of thousands more relying on their paychecks, along with thousands of reliant businesses.

As surly Seattleites scoffed at plans underway for his cross-state hometown to host a World’s Fair of its own, Danny O’Keefe was laying down an ode to Seattle, a decidedly downbeat version of his soon-to-be hit Goodtime Charlie’s Got the Blues.

…Find the sunshine, leave the rain…got my pills to ease the pain, can’t find a thing to ease the rain…

Everybody’s Leaving Town.”

It would be seven years before Microsoft, with just 13 employees, would relocate across Lake Washington in Bellevue.

Even the notoriety brought that fall by the mysterious disappearance of D.B. Cooper after hijacking a Northwest Orient Airlines flight bound for Seattle didn’t relieve its blues.

But hidden under that fog of doom and gloom, Seattle was also rediscovering its authenticity, the precursor to cool.

A year after that infamous billboard, three Bay area teachers (history, writing and English) would open the first Starbucks.

They adapted roasting techniques they had learned working in the late 1960s summers from artisanal pioneer Alfred Peet, in the historic building across from the 1930s mission-revival Mormon chapel in the “Ghetto Gourmet” neighborhood of Berkeley.

The first Starbucks was actually on Western Avenue about 400 feet northwest of Pike Place Market, which had been doing business since 1907, before moving directly across the street from the historic market, the site now celebrated as the original Starbucks.

The year after it opened, Mr. Coffee, the first automatic drip home coffee maker was introduced and ten years later drip coffee maker salesman, Howard Schultz lobbied Starbuck’s owners for a marketing job.

Schultz bought Starbucks in 1987, and more importantly, its roasting formula and its authenticity.  Now a proven genius at marketing a brand, Schultz grasped that “it is authenticity that makes them last.”

Even 20,000 stores later, Starbucks zealously guards its “authenticity” going back to its roots including that historic store across the street from Pike Place Market, where lines of pilgrims run for blocks.

While they also took in the Space Needle on their first visit, it is Pike Place Market still perched on a steep bluff above Puget Sound these 100+ years, that my grandsons insist we revisit during frequent returns for family holidays.

During the 1920s, due to parking issues, city leaders flirted with relocating the Market but didn’t after protests.  In 1963, the year after the World’s Fair, the City considered the idea of tearing it down for a hotel/apartment/office building and hockey arena.

Again, Seattle residents rose up in defense, but this time they also pushed for a protective historic preservation zone.  By 1970, all of the Pike Place Market historic buildings were undergoing restoration, using  original plans, blueprints and building materials.

Traveling to or through Seattle during the first half of my now concluded four-decade career in community-destination marketing, I stayed occasionally with friends living on Magnolia and Queen Ann hills.

As do the handful of other hills hemming Seattle’s downtown, not only does each feature an organic neighborhood district but views of the skyline evoke the caution in Wallace Stegner’s essay Sense of Place that:

“the West has been raided more often than settled… raiders moved on when they got what they came for…”

He laments that some communities changed so fast that memories could not “cling to them.”  He further cautions that they lose their character when they lose their memory.

Twenty-eight hundred miles southeast, Durham, North Carolina, where I live, is still “raided” from time to time.  Monuments to “franchised architecture” earn nicknames such as the “green weenie.”

Penn’s esteemed Emeritus Professor of Urbanism and architect, Witold Rybczynski (Vee-told Rib-chin-ski) terms these placeless monuments a failure to see that architecture “is a social art, rather than a personal one…”

He continues that architecture is “…meant to be a reflection” of a locality “and its values rather than a medium of individualized expression…”

Admitting that “it’s exciting to bring high-powered architects in from outside.  It flatters a city’s sense of self-importance…”

“But in the long run,” Dr. Rybczynski concludes, “it’s wiser to nurture local talent: instead of starchitects, localtects.”

So often, high-rise building architects dismiss that design should reflect a community’s distinct values and sense of place.  Like many of Seattle’s, some strive to be generic.

Unlike Pike Place or Magnolia or Queen Ann, they aren’t what makes that city cool.

As Rybczynski notes in his recent book How Architecture Works, new buildings should seek coherence with place not personality cult.  It’s a must read for community officials signing off on plans for new buildings.

Change is inevitable to communities but as Stegner warns in his essay, too often “it means stereotype.”  Sense of place endures where communities manage change in a way that preserves character.

Preserving community character as a strategy for growth while pursuing continuous improvement is “absolutely consistent” according to Harvard’s Dr. Michael Porter, “in fact, they’re mutually reinforcing.”

In the words of sense of place land use expert Edward T. McMahon:

“We sometimes forget that every building has a site, every site has a neighborhood, and every neighborhood is part of a community.”

To often officials worry about preservation of a few facades at street level only to surrender the skyline to incongruity.  Straddling, such as this is called, is a sure fire formula for sense of place mediocrity.

As Microsoft’s first dozen employees settled across the lake from Seattle, across the state I had just earned a “degree” in organizational differentiation, helping business leaders spin off an independent community-destination marketing startup.

But it didn’t sink in that community differentiation from competitors was pivotal until I was nine months into another startup in Anchorage, Alaska.

Coincidentally, that was one of the places my parents had turned down in 1970 when my dad’s Seattle assignment was complete.

Phillips that year had signed onto a consortium to build the Trans Alaska Pipeline, which was completed in 1977, the year before my arrival.

Likewise, my parents rejected reassignment to Norway, where in 1969 Phillips had discovered a huge North Sea oil field.

Instead they elected to return to our family’s Rocky Mountains roots.

While dispensing a briefcase of “airplane” reading on an early 1979 flight back home to Anchorage, I came across a paper on strategy and differentiation by Dr. Porter, a Harvard business professor my age.

I was still doing some “this equals that” to apply the paper to my work with communities when my plane stopped in Juneau and disembarking, my seatmate Jack Musiel (Muse-elle,) asked to borrow it.

At a meeting a year later, Jack, a friend who was then head of Westours (Holland America,) returned the favor when he handed me Professor Porter’s newly published book expanding on the topic - Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors.

In the mid-1980s, I did Jack a little “menting” in return during a stint when he ran the DMO for Miami Beach.  Fearing revitalization might never come, officials planned to surrender its identity to the “greater.”

I quickly forwarded a copy of Stegner’s then just-published essay on Sense of Place as a means to illustrate what could be lost in the mix.  Ironically, revitalization undetected was already taking effect.

Jack, who passed away in 2001, and I enjoyed ticking off “Porter quotes” such as those below like they were on cue cards.  I wish I had paid even closer attention:

“Strategy…is about deliberately choosing to be different.”

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

“A strategy delineates a territory in which a company [or community] seeks to be unique.”

“The ability to change constantly and effectively is made easier by high level continuity.”

“…strategy must have continuity.  It can’t be constantly reinvented.”

There is always a tiny nugget to be gleaned. Then go shower.

Before I touch on new research supporting the importance of authentic sense of place, let me touch on one of the ironies from my four decade career as a guardian of sense of place.

It is how much time is required in that profession to defend communities from mainstream tourism interests.

Those drawn to the appeal of sense of place but then from  overbuilding and lack of differentiation brought on by ubiquity, soon begin to cannibalize it instead.

Desperately demanding more and more promotional oxygen to subsidize their responsibility to fill beds and seats, they instead begin sucking away at what is meant to promote the community at large and fuel overall visitation.

During the 1970s and 1980s, it was from convention-related hotels, and meeting or event planners demanding kick-backs or subsidies or facility-driven public officials desperate to obscure deficits when public facilities were no longer warranted.

In the 1990s, it was from mega-event “big-game hunters” intent on subsidies to secure events far too large to fit or held only at times that displaced as much or more demand than they generated.

In the 2000s, my final decade, it was from mainstream events and performing arts facilities which, desperate from overbuilding hundred more than warranted, sought to monopolize attention far disproportional to their percentage of visitor potential, at the risk to less pretentious forms.

If that isn’t enough, there are always one of two elected officials impatient for returns from leveraged visitor spending, who seek to drain away promotional resources.

So why did I love my career so much?

Because communities worth loving as places to live are places people find worthy of visiting.  They are the reason the vast majority of people travel away from their homes at all.

That “authenticity” must be protected and carefully nurtured even during the process of creating awareness and appeal.

Because guarding and leveraging sense of place is also incredibly worthwhile and rewarding.

But I still took time to listen very carefully to those who sought to undermine sense of place, even if intentionally.

Not only was there always a fragment of value to be gleaned but it made me think and reflect more deeply about my own assumptions and the data behind them.

As Dr. Robert Reich recently commented, “there is no better way to learn than to talk to someone who disagrees with you.”

The annual study of leisure travelers who now make up 3-in-4 visitor stays includes indices of areas of importance as well as travel style broken down by generation.

“Nature” scores above 50%, and nearly 65% for “boomers” such as me.

But “authenticity,” the desire for real destinations vs. commercial or mainstream tourism product, is more important across all generations but even more so among Millennials as is “culinary interests,”  engaging in a destination’s arts and cultural assets, and “exploration.”

“Activities,” are among the least important across all generations.

For many communities, this awareness is far too late.  Their sense of place and authenticity has already been hollowed out by preoccupation with mega-facilities and events, mainstream culture and arts, cookie-cutter lodging, formula stores and chain restaurants.

For communities still clinging desperately to their sense of place against the forces of homogenization, the lessons from this report and many others I’ve linked to in essays key-worded as “authenticity,” are clear:

• Focus marketing efforts on unique sense of place assets such as indigenous art and festivals, green infrastructure, historic preservation, organically evolved districts, and locally-owned stores and restaurants.
• Keep mainstream elements in their place while teaching them how to embrace the authentic characteristics of a community.
• Be ever vigilant of the dangers that come with success such as “fear of saying no,” “churn,” “unholy alliances between policy makers and powerful special interests,” and “envy.”
• Forsake those who claim “special knowledge” and relentlessly pursue critical and strategic thinking, differentiation, data and information-driven decision-making.
• Beware of the incestuous deadly sins of complacency and envy of other places.
• Eschew desecration marketing, including billboards, as well as other “yelling” forms of advertising.  Generously invest in the sharing of valuable content, earned attention and respect is the most valuable.
• Religiously foster and protect distinctiveness and carefully guard against decisions that glitter but merely make a community one of many.

And always strive to listen, especially in the face of spittle, condescension, disrespect, anger, drama, exile, character assassinations, bribes, end-runs, betrayals, sycophants, demands and cabals.

There is always a tiny nugget to be gleaned.  Then go shower.

Be fearless.  Communities still worthy of love, still worthy of visitation, and still having a soul will always be worth fighting for.

The Unlikely Origin of Tourism’s Sense of Authenticity

Reaching back to a tent restaurant erected there in 1919, Lexington brands itself, at least in part, the “barbecue capital” of North Carolina, a state with considerable heritage in that regard.

But it was a tragic train accident eight years earlier that occurred between that would-be tent site and what is now High Rock Lake that is more symbolic for tourism historically across the nation.

My Tar Heel Roots go back to 1650 but because I am the last of a line of five generations of Idaho ranchers going back to the 1860s and didn’t make my way to North Carolina until 1989, I’m considered “adopted” by those who could be considered far more relative “newbies.”

But it seems that wherever I’ve lived, including my native Yellowstone-Teton nook of Idaho, I’ve crossed paths with William F. Cody.  It was least expected here in North Carolina as I began what would be the last half of a four decade career in community destination marketing.

When a freight train tragically smashed into one of three trains near Lexington, Cody’s “Buffalo Bill Wild West Show”s (sometimes known by other names) was in the midst of 40 performances throughout North Carolina between 1878 and 1916, including two in Durham where we live.

Over 100 horses were killed in the accident, and the vitality of the show that had also performed hundreds of times throughout the country and throughout Europe would never really recover.

But it is easily arguable that no other person did more to instill a curiosity for transcontinental travel across the United States in both Americans and those overseas.

His attention to detail and authenticity informed expectations. 

Equally significant, Cody redefined and instilled a deep appreciation for history, culture and artifacts among those living in relatively newly settled lands east of the Hundredth Meridian.

He seemed to innately grasp what place branding expert Bill Baker tries to impart wherever he is invited to teach.

The brand of a particular place is, in essence, its innate personality.  It exists at the intersection of what internal audiences and external audiences perceive it to be.

Today, more than ever, it is not something you conjure up or create, it’s simple who and what you genuinely are, something Cody understood was far more appealing than fantasy.

In a moment I will share a story or two about how Cody’s influence has helped shape the negotiation of authenticity over the decades about what it is and isn’t western, a negotiation still underway.

But first, for anyone unfamiliar or in need of a very quick refresher:

Cody was born in Iowa in 1846; the year after my ancestors began fleeing across the southern half of that soon-to-be state toward sanctuary in the Rockies.

Then his family moved to eastern Kansas where he lost his father.

At age 11 he worked as a rider carrying messages between drivers and workers on wagon trains before becoming a bullwhacker, then a trapper, miner and briefly a Pony Express Rider.

He enlisted in the Union Cavalry and after the war worked as a buffalo hunter for the railroad.  Cody then became a Chief of Scouts for the 5th U.S. Cavalry, leading the rescue of Wild Bill Hickok.

Eventually, he earned the Medal of Honor during the Indian Wars.

Cody became a public figure and the subject of dime novels as well as outspoken about the rights of Native Americans.  In addition, he became a performer and show producer.

As a close friend of President Theodore Roosevelt, Cody was also instrumental in the nation’s first national forest and the national reclamation act.

The best way to get a sense of William F. Cody is to visit his namesake along the Absaroka Mountains in northern Wyoming as they give way to the Bighorn.

Cody, Wyoming is the eastern and to many the most scenic and least touristy gateway to Yellowstone Park.  It is also home to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, which is comprised of four museums including one devoted to Bill Cody’s story as well as a research library.

The little town is also home to the still operating Irma Hotel which Cody co-founded a year after that train wreck back in North Carolina. 

He began by acquiring and then expanding the T E Ranch up the more secluded South Fork from Cody in 1895 and then built a hunting lodge up on the North Fork where the road now leads to Yellowstone since the dam was built.

But Cody first saw the potential of this area in 1870 while leading a scientific expedition up the Bighorn.  It happened to be the same year an expedition was being led to examine the potential of Yellowstone.

Until then, exploration of river valleys along the Rockies such as the Henry’s Fork where my ancestors would settle were dismissive of any settlement potential.  But fresh eyes such as Cody’s changed all of that.

William F. Cody had a sense of authenticity that has inspired 150 years of nomenclature about the old West and is preserved today in details and artifacts such as clothing and dress and speech.

His shows inspired audiences to travel and to know what to expect.  They also helped negotiate what experts call the ongoing interplay and socially-agreed upon construct that we designate as authentic.

Tourism faces much courser fault lines than just authenticity today.  Take for instance, the one that exists between commercial hucksterism and genuine sense of place.

The West does too, and not just recently with standoffs by a few militants in Nevada and Oregon.

In 1939, a movement anchored in the Sheridan Rotary Club began with a threat to secede and break off northern Wyoming including Cody and Yellowstone into the State of Absoroka.

The frustration back then, as it had been during the “range wars” 50 years earlier was more about intrastate politics with the federal policies as a surrogate.

But as it does today, another fault line separated the views of preservationist northwestern and fossil-fuel driven northeastern Wyoming.

I thought of this on a cross country trip through my homeland a few years ago while listening to a story on the radio far more reflective of the West in which I grew up.

A rancher down on the South Fork, near Cody’s T E ranch, was out irrigating his hay fields in June of 2013 when he accidentally came between a Grizzly and her cubs.

Watch this very short video of this remarkable account and listen carefully to Nic Patrick’s remarks at the end.

If you are a regular reader, you may recall that my great-great-great grandfather, Thomas B. Graham, was killed in 1864 by a Grizzly in Cache Valley, Utah under similar circumstances, after having put his rifle down to help my great-great grandfather load some wood.

Like many ranchers, Patrick is a conservationist.  Also like many ranchers, he has another occupation.  For nearly forty years, he and his family have built authentic log homes, often for people who are drawn to live a version of the life Bill Cody depicted.

He understands something that William F. Cody came to understand during his lifetime.

Tourism can help preserve nature and the things it loves.  But unmanaged tourism can also often introduce changes that can kill the very the things it loves.

A lot is written today about gentrification of historic neighborhoods.  If well-managed so that socio-economic diversity is preserved, it isn’t a problem.  If not, the very soul of those neighborhoods and the reasons they became so popular is rapidly hollowed out.

However, gentrification can also occur in areas of the West around public lands.   Studies show that for both kinds of gentrification, tourism popularity can provide warning signals to policy makers that they need to instill protections.

Unfortunately, tourism circles today have far too few Buffalo Bill Cody’s.  Instead of being willing to debate the broader issues society faces, they are prone instead to circle the wagons.

The True Meaning of Place Authenticity

A friend of mine who is an executive at Americans for the Arts warned me years ago during a now-concluded four decade career in destination marketing to beware of mainstream attractions, especially those that specialize in things you can see anywhere.

He noted, “Their success goes to their head and before you know it, they seek to cannibalize the very features that truly make a destination authentic and appealing.”

New research shown below continues to zero in on what authentic means when it comes to destination communities.  It offers a clue as to why mainstream facilities so often seem threatened by it.

I saw this mysterious reaction often repeat itself over my four decades of community destination marketing for three different communities, but could never fathom why they were so threatened.

Sometimes hotels, other times sports or convention facilities, even tour companies and theaters common to many places often inscrutably attacked or sought to undermine the very characteristics that made those communities distinct and therefore appealing.

I had a front row seat to these behaviors because the jugular these mainstream entities go for is the community marketing organizations serving as guardians for unique sense of place.

Even research conducted for amusements such as theme parks and gaming casinos that simulate other places clearly shows that overall, by more than 3-to-1, visitors prefer real or authentic experiences to those that are simulated or fantasy.

By nearly 5-to-1 visitors feel that real or authentic characteristics caused them to view the last destination they visited more favorably, and for nearly 6-in-10, much more favorably.

I was reviewing the attributes that visitors mean by authenticity when a recent report in the Wall Street Journal popped up on my screen headlined “A Dozen Stadiums, a Million Problems.”

It is an old story regarding mega-events, which are by definition, mainstream.  These events have never lived up to hype and in their wake usually leave unsustainable facilities that retain the uber-narcissistic hangover left by the corporate leaders and government officials who spawned them.

Brazil, which is the latest to fall victim, will soon host both the World Cup and the Olympics falling for the old mythical saw—long disproven—that mega-events translate into awareness and favorability or for that matter, any sustainable awareness at all.

My first experience with a mega-event was the World’s Fair in Spokane but there, the primary objective was to clean up the industrial toxins across its riverfront, converting two islands that split a huge waterfall and the river banks into a central park.

Different than other mega-events, its legacy was not unsustainable facilities but rather a spectacular waterway reclaimed from blight, an iconic and historic clock tower and a rare restored carousel, all authentic to Spokane and sense of place tourism.

But that’s where I first learned that the 5.2 million people visiting during the six month event, as with all mega-events, actually displaced or scared away many times that number who would have come anyway.

This paradox was reinforced a decade later when, with a few others from Anchorage, as we were evaluating an Olympic bid I made an unexpected scouting visit to the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Without reservations, we were able to easily find discounted rooms in the finest hotels and walk right into famed restaurants.  This repeated itself at the Atlanta Olympics when I was in Durham.

Experts from McKinsey who have been studying Brazil are far more convinced that the billions redirected to mega-events would have far greater impact if directed back to spending on R&D muscle in Brazil’s growth sectors or a more strategic improvement of transportation infrastructure, an already proven engine of economic resurgence.

Even the promise of transportation infrastructure as a byproduct to these events is already being cannibalized by overruns on sports facilities. Hence, public support has plummeted by nearly half.

Only 14% of Brazil’s road system is paved, something that will not be improved by repaving entrances to stadiums.  But public support may rebound once the TV cameras roll.  Everyone likes to see themselves in the news.

In the aftermath, the usual cover stories for hosting the event will emerge.  These elaborations are catching up with proponents though, as evidenced by withdrawals to host the Winter Olympics, a trend sure to eventually spread.

Organizers are taking heed and hopefully with their enablers soon downsize these events back to their smaller, more manageable, less costly and far more authentic roots.

It is money that corrupts mega-events and forces them to try to become ever larger.  It is also at the source of why mainstream events and facilities turn again the authenticity of communities that spawn them.

Government officials in Brazil are taking the heat as they always do but their own narcissistic tendencies were fueled by those in the business community (a condition found far greater among these groups than in the general population.)

So what do visitors find to be authentic in a visitor destination?  What are those attributes so seemingly threatening to and held in such disdain by mainstream facilities as well as those obsessed with seeming “major league” by seeking to be one of many vs. distinct?

There is room for a few mainstream facilities even in communities with sense of place remaining.  They appeal to the small segment of travelers who are often called “shoppers” because they seek on a trip to do the things they do at home, the things they can do anywhere, anytime.

For them, unique sense of place is unimportant or easily substituted by a fantasized place or a theme park or a fantasy event in a mainstream facility that could be really be anywhere.          

But this group is tiny compared to the vast proportion of travelers seeking something unique and genuine, e.g. local artists, galleries and culture, indigenous festivals and events, historic sites, local museums, flora, fauna, waterways, gardens and countryside unique to place, local architecture, local restaurants, local foods, independent and locally-owned stores, local stories and plays etc.

Even the most venturesome among these visitors are also looking for somewhere more quiet and relaxing, without lines, away from crowds, a place where unique memories can be stitched.

Destinations must keep mainstream facilities and events in perspective and in check or risk losing overall appeal.  They have a niche but hegemony must not be tolerated.

No matter how tiny or unassuming or unpretentious or un-programed the ingredients are that make a place truly a place, they are the most important characteristics of a destination and deserve unfailing attention and nurturing and the utmost respect from mainstream entities.

Hopefully, mainstreamers will figure that out before they ruin too many more destinations still clinging to sense of place.  Because once that is gone so are the reasons the majority of people travel.

The Native Home of Hope

Authenticity is not a fad when it comes to sense of place,  but use - or should I say misuse – of the word has become one.

This will pass, and when it does the attributes of authenticity of place will remain by definition nearly temporal.

My personal story begins as the only son of an only son, born at the tail end of five generations of Rocky Mountain ranchers who gradually migrated during the hundred years before I was born from the Central to the Northern Rockies.

Our ancestral ranch is where I learned sense of place, e.g. the smell of sage brush, new mown hay, and rain on a dirt road, as well as the sound of a Meadowlark and the colors of Yellowstone Cutthroat in the Henry’s Fork.

But it is also where I first learned about myths: including myths about rugged individualists, the cowboy errant Knight and other stereotypes of the West that I see fleeting across the eyes of people who want to hear my story.

I didn’t read Wallace Stegner until I came across his incredible essay in my early 30s entitled, Sense of Place.  This is where he coined that term and I still recommend to anyone seeking an understanding of authenticity.

It was my daughter, then in her third year of college, who brought me to Stegner in more depth.  Having heard my story, she knew that the breadth and depth of his writings would resonate.  It is such a gift to be understood.

One of my favorites is a book of essays written over a span that covered my first two decades entitled, The Sound of Mountain Water.  The first was published the year before I was born, the last in the collection as I turned 21.

The namesake essay in the book is a lyrical description about my native Yellowstone-Teton nook of Idaho and its famed Henry’s Fork including this resonate memoir from his first visit there in 1920:

“I gave my heart to the mountains the minute I stood beside this river…”

It is a myth though that the west was settled by rugged individualists.

While that characteristic was prevalent, in several of his books, Stegner supports, as he does in one of the essays in The Sound of Mountain Water, that “cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves” the American West.

When all but two lines of my ancestors crossed the Rockies, to be followed by the remaining two within a decade, there were fewer than 90,000 people inhabiting 750,000 square miles (twice the area of Western Europe.)

There were fewer than 70,000 along the Rockies, nearly all living in what are now New Mexico and Arizona.

Even after the Gold Rush and the arrival of 11,000 Mormons by 1850, the entire West when my ancestors settled there was less than 1% of the US population at the time.

Ranches required an average of four square miles or 2,500 acres, so to avoid isolation and provide safety and shared resources, much of the West was settled on what is called a “village and square model.”

It’s also why early jurisdictions for governance there relied more on river basins and watersheds for boundaries.

Predominately, during the fifty years prior to 1890 as the West was won ranchers lived in settlements near craftsmen, artisans, granaries and supply depots and commuted out to their land and livestock.

Sometimes historians also refer to this as a “village-farm system.”

Much of what is depicted in novels and movies about the West as well as that depicted by many of those who profess to be westerners today is synthetic.

Pure and simple, the West evolved to what it is today through a sense of commons that revolutionized the sense of land and water ownership.

The myth of rugged self-reliance became evident during the 1930’s Great Depression.

Groups such as Mormon leaders felt their recently evolved welfare program would be sufficient and pressed by partisans expressed that somehow the new federal program which emulated it would create sloth and dependency.

But the Mountain states where Mormons were then centered became the largest per capita users of the federal aid program.  Mormon leaders marveled at the public works projects completed by those receiving it as a condition.

Given their history, they shouldn’t have been at all surprised.

Apparently, they had forgotten that it is trust that led to economic development of the West, just as a new study has found in a study of survivors of Atomic bombs that trust enabled them to rebuild from that trauma.

Today, a small group of regressives in the West are pushing to let special interests get their hands on public lands for mining and drilling, backed quietly by Wall Street interests who have over the decades, raped the West in similar fashion.

They are dismissing economic analysis, which I have written about previously, showing that rural counties adjacent to public lands have outperformed others and that counties where resource exploitation occurs ultimately fall much lower.

But it was not the various gold, silver and copper strikes in the early west that provided sustainable growth.

It was grass.

In part, it was this unique, resilient, drought tolerant wild grass that led my ancestors who had settled in 1860 along each side of the Utah-Idaho border to relocate to the northern extreme of the Upper Snake River plain to create new homesteads along the Henry’s Fork.

Famously framed by the Continental Divide, Yellowstone and the Tetons, this area of my origin is the culmination of a hundred mile stretch that is no more than 70 miles wide at its widest narrowing to 20 or 30 miles where I was born.

The sides of this valley range to 10,000’ framed by the Lost River and Lemhi ranges stretching down from the Sawtooths and on the east by the Caribou, Snake River and Teton ranges.

My ancestors were following an old stagecoach supply route between Utah and the mines in Montana which, beginning in the late 1870s, was becoming the path of a slowly emerging railroad eventually to supply tourists to Yellowstone.

But above where the Henry’s Fork joined the South Fork to form the Snake River, settlers such as my ancestors were surprised to find the landscape covered not by sage brush, but waist high, wild bluegrass from the river to the Tetons and north to forests of the Centennial range.

The area had already been transited by trappers and then a cattle company but it was still available to homestead.  But they still followed the modified “village-farm and ranch” model adapted from when their parents cross the Rockies in the mid-1840s.

My ancestors found that the western side of the Henry’s Fork was even better adapted to ranching.  They had modified the village-ranch model but settled this new area as they had others in the West through cooperation.

Together, they marked off land, built bridges and roads, created reservoirs and irrigation canals, established granaries for the poor, created cemeteries and erected school houses.

Tough, independent and self-reliant – certainly – but with an even greater commitment to cooperation, the commons, public education and the welfare of those less fortunate.

By the time I was born in 1948, a hundred years after ancestors began settling the Rocky Mountain west,  rich potato farms had replaced the bluegrass in our nook of Idaho, as they have the ranchland on the west side now thanks to pivot irrigation systems.

The West is always changing.  Although I haven’t lived there since the 1970s, I travel along the Rockies each summer on road trips with my grandsons and daughter. 

Much more dramatic than the subtle land use changes since my youth are the demographic and psychographic changes.  Much of Idaho has been inhabited by in migration that seemingly seeks to replace the real Idaho by making it a refuge for the synthetic West.

I don’t mean the Aryan Nation which was expelled fifteen years ago.  Places in Idaho are exurbs such as Coeur d’Alene.  While whites represent only 8% of the population growth in the past decade, they represent 73% of the flight to exurbs.

Most seem to be chasing myths created when misinformation is re-harmonized to fit worldview.

It is complicated but emblematic.  The best way to understand why my homeland now seems foreign, click to watch an episode of the phenomenal PBS America By The Numbers program entitled Our Private Idaho.

As a fellow North Carolinian once wrote, “You Can Never Go Home Again,” and that is sad.  But the West will keep changing.

But as Stegner wrote, the West is also “the native home of Hope.”  My hope is that it will once again claim its authentic roots.