The Trait Shared By “Big Game Hunters”

Community destination marketing organizations that fall into the trap of “big game hunting” share a cultural trait dating back to before the 1920s when leisure travel emerged as mainstream.

They are generally marketing organizations in name only, having untethered sales from its constraints as an element of marketing along with any focus on distinctiveness, differentiation, sense of place or fit.

“Big game hunters” are individuals or groups of enablers who, lacking awareness or patience with fostering the sense of particular place, seek instead to import it by going shopping for culture and bringing back one of everything.

They also have in common a sales focus in the traditional sense (e.g., I have produced something to sell and need to convince you to buy it even if it requires subsidies) as it was when community destination marketing organizations first evolved in the 1890s and was being taught in colleges by 1904.

Marketing thought and practice (e.g.,what do you need and maybe I have something that will fit that need) including a customer-focused integration of sales was already rapidly evolving.

Some community marketing organizations began to adopt marketing including a different focus to sales in the 1920s and especially during the 1930s, while many never made the shift.

Many still remained glued to old fashioned sales by the time marketing theory and practice really took immediately after WWII.

This is also when marketing became scientific as documented by authors such as Wroe Alderson in his co-authored 1948 book Towards a Theory of Marketing, the year I was born.

It was followed by his 1957 book, Marketing Behavior and Executive Action, still in use as a textbook when I entered college a decade later.  But many community marketing organizations as they are today remained stuck in the 1890s.

Nor did they budge when in 1960, Harvard professor Theodore Levitt published a paper, later expanded into a book by the same name entitled Marketing Myopia, describing the difference between untethered sales and integrated marketing.

My four decade career leading community destination marketing organizations didn’t consciously begin until 1973, the year after I graduated, but reading that paper as a class assignment while helping to jumpstart an office to market the BYU campus for youth conferences, as a part-time job, had made me aware of what marketing meant.

Even as I began my career in earnest helping to create a community marketing organization for Spokane, peer organizations still stuck in the 1890s sales mindset mounted furious opposition to even changing the name of these organizations to add the word visitor after conventions, my first exposure to “big game hunters.”

Though mine had allowed me to escape being trapped, I can easily trace the DNA of the organizations today that remain stuck in the 1890s by tracing those influential in their background.

It is hard to say if I just happened to choose communities eager to avoid that trap or they found me, but I was dogged throughout my career by “big game hunters” in each of the three communities I served, all of whom were eager to pull us back into the past, several coming close to having me fired.

Communities that forgo sense of place and authenticity to “big game hunt” instead for mega-facilities or events that make them the same as other communities and then resort to subsidies to underwrite their appeal appeal, are still practicing sales as it was well more than a hundred years ago.

Marketing a community requires finesse by appealing to visitors who will find a particular place a good fit in return for their time and treasure while pursuing groups and events only when they meet these criteria:

• Occur during time periods where they won’t distract from homegrown events
• Won’t displace existing visitors
• Won’t siphon away underwriting, audience and volunteers from homegrown events
• Are complimentary with a community’s unique stature

Untethered from marketing, a sales-dominant focus superimposes these criteria with quotas and winning new accounts against a far too narrow metric such as just filling hotel rooms.

Surveys across all kinds of organizations show that only 18% of sales teams are held accountable for minimizing churn and only 30% are accountable for maintaining margins and avoiding discounts and subsidies, the hallmarks of “big game hunters.”

By using myopic metrics, they also fail to be accountable for a return that even replenishes the dollars used as subsidy.  Had they not untethered from marketing they would be seeing returns closer to 6-to-1 in tax revenues to the community overall.

The battle to protect sense of place from the forces of mainstream entertainment and fantasy dates at least to April 7. 1858 when two Democrats (the conservatives of that day) appointed to the Central Park Board tried to pollute, a week after it had been approved, the plan by Fredrick Law Omsted and his partner.

“Big game hunting” by communities hoping to import sense of place rather than foster it indigenously by intensified in the 1940s in the immediate aftermath of WWII.

Most communities in the 1920s and 1930s had broadened to a marketing focus when leisure travel achieved mass appeal but this was coopted when after WWII, developers inured to destruction of historic buildings during that conflict and settling for churn began to gain influence over public expenditures.

Beginning in the mid to late 1940s, many cities stopped viewing facilities such as convention centers, stadiums and performance halls for their inherent potential.

Instead, pushed by “big game hunters,” elected officials began to build them instead, with tax dollars, as a way to shore up private property values, something still very common today.

It should be no surprise that this is also when the owners of sports teams, emerging as a form of mainstream entertainment, began to shop for cities under the spell of “big game hunters.” 

While the owners of the NFL’s Boston Braves may have been the first to do so, changing to Redskins and relocating to Washington D.C. in 1937, they were quickly followed after WWII by the Buffalo Bisons of the NBA, moving first to Moline as the Blackhawks then in 1951 to Saint Louis as the Hawks, then to Atlanta in 1968 for a new arena.

In Major League Baseball, it began in 1953 when the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee before relocating again in 1966 to Atlanta, lured by a community built on “big game hunting.”

When in 1955 the owner of the Dodgers moved to LA, persuading the owner of the cross-town Giants to move to San Francisco, he was lured by LA’s “big game hunters.”

Both marketing and the element of sales have continued to evolve but many community marketing organizations, even if they wanted to move away from sales as it was practiced more than a hundred years ago are trapped by the undue influence of “big game hunters” in their communities.

Those that long ago shifted are never entirely safe when local officials fall under the spell of “big game hunters” who see marketing as a threat to their main stream fixations and relentlessly push behind the scenes to gain control of the community marketing organizations in their communities.

Communities that value the higher performance gained by fostering and preserving the things that make them distinct vs. “big game hunting” must not only make sure their community marketing organization isn’t trapped in the past but relentlessly protect local officials from undue influence by “big game hunters.”

All of this is not to suggest that sales isn’t an important element of marketing for community marketing organizations.  Those that have made the shift as revealed in this study illustrate the difference between high performing sales teams and others, in part, because they practice a much higher level of accountability.

These high performers are also much more focused on the quality of sales, such as avoiding discounts and especially subsidies.

“Big game hunters” hate these constraints, preferring myopic metrics rather than information driven decision-making and the “who’s asking” approach to decision-making.

Some communities still have a choice about whether to cave in to these powerful interests or instead foster an indigenous sense of place ecosystem protected by a community marketing organization with that as its focus.

For far too many, it no longer matters what century their community marketing is in.

The Flaw of Trying To Import Sense of Place

More troubling unfortunate news about the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, NC is once again affirmation of the harm “big game hunting” does to communities.

The term refers to otherwise well-meaning people who, impatient with evolving or lacking faith in a distinctive community sense of place, are perpetually motivated instead to try to import the cultural aspect.

Then these imported facilities and events invariably and very imperceptibly begin to hollow out sense of place by siphoning away capacity, underwriting, exposure, patience and volunteers.

Once past the tipping point, they begin to tap and draw off audience from other more homegrown events and venues.

Communities with more grass-roots power bases involving activists and neighborhoods can seem immune to “big game hunters.”

But as has happened in even the most self-aware communities, this can be reversed in a matter of a few years when elected bodies, chambers of commerce and even community marketing agencies - charged as sense of place guardians - become enablers by falling under the spell of or trying to placate “big game hunters.”

The mantra of a “big game hunter” is that a community is nothing if it isn’t main stream, “major league” and “big picture,” generally used as put downs on anyone concerned with authentic sense of place.

Unfortunately, analysis shows that facilities and events fitting these descriptors are most often the road to “sameness” and ubiquity, rather than the uniqueness shown to have appeal with the vast majority of travelers.

Of course, sense of place lies along a spectrum.  But it can only survive and thrive if the fulcrum always tips in favor of the distinctive, indigenous and “real.”

Unfortunately, “big game hunting” is addictive and power-hungry and knows no balance.

Sense of place is a delicate ecosystem, fostered more by gardening than hunting and can never be imported.

After cities build large-scale, mainstream cultural facilities, policy makers almost always pay attention to the wrong metrics such as attendance or operating profit or loss.

“Big game hunting” is based partly on lack of appreciation for the distinctive, partly on delusion and partly on failure to focus on broad enough metrics.

Most who truly read the 2006 proposal for the NASCAR Museum in Charlotte could readily see that the numbers didn’t make sense but for a community addicted to “facilities,” it (for once) seemed to make sense for Charlotte’s sense of place.

At first blush, Charlotte’s claim to NASCAR is merely one of proximity, located in the state that hosted 30 of the 52 races in the 1949 inaugural season, close to nearby Concord’s major speedway and close to the area where many of the racing teams are based and conduct research, development and race preparation.

But Charlotte at one time had at least three raceways located there and hosted the first “strictly stock” event in 1949.  Auto dealerships there have also been key as track and race team owners.

But Charlotte “big game hunters” apparently “cooked the books” far too much in the desperate effort to win out over other cities.

Numbers from a 2003 report on the importance of motorsports was misused or misread.  In the gross, the sector had more than a $5 billion annual impact on North Carolina, $4 billion of which occurred in the 12 counties near Charlotte.

But “big game hunters” neglected to mention that the “value added” or net to North Carolina was just over $2 billion and about $99 million tourism-related.

The price-tag was also significantly understated and promoters failed to grasp that most tourism (daytrip and overnight) drawn through the turnstiles for such facilities would be unrelated to the facility, meaning it would be siphoned from other facilities and events in Charlotte’s already stressed cultural ecosystem.

Ironically, “big game hunters” argued it would be augmented by visitors attending heavily subsidized events such as conventions further undermining the purpose of visitor-centric economic and cultural development.

Part of the problem is that instead of allowing its community destination marketing organization to drive tourism demand from which its facilities then become feasible and harvest a share, the community has shackled its DMO to operate facilities, subsidize events and cover deficits, giving “big game hunters” cover.

The Hall of Fame is not an anomaly, it is merely another symbol that “build it and they will come” never really works, and that main stream facilities such as these, including convention centers, often cannibalize not only more destination-authentic venues and events but in the end one another.

The City of Charlotte is now offering to pay $5 million toward loan guarantees from banks there (actually the city is volunteering the visitor authority to pay that amount, diverting it from marketing where, if not restricted by the state as a condition of permitting Charlotte to exceed use guidelines, it would be instead generating a 6-to-1 return local tax revenue.)

This means if used to pump revenues instead of subsidy, the city would have $30 million in hand for that offer.

But the most significant way the Hall of Fame will undermine that community’s true sense of place is related to Charlotte’s request that its banks “write off” or “extinguish” $14.1 million in principle and another $3.7 million in accrued interest in return for free sponsorships.

State taxpayers who surrendered $20 million worth of land to make the $195 million deal work will ostensibly, for now, also have any hope of a return “extinguished.”

I have no doubt that the Hall of Fame will stabilize as expectations are recalibrated but the tragic consequences that “big game hunters” and enablers fail to grasp or refuse to take responsibility for include three other more tragic losses:

1. In Charlotte, the banks will be less likely now to shoulder backing on behalf of smaller, less conspicuous but far more essential events and facilities to sense of place.
2. Lawmakers will be suspicious of future proposals to end-run guidelines for worthy purposes.
3. Philanthropic gestures will be hardened if not curtailed as will be any cultural innovation.

But a reality is that communities susceptible, if not addicted, to “big game hunting” are also suffering from Dunning-Kruger Effect, the inability to learn from mistakes.  Under its spell, they fail to recognize incompetence or genuine alternatives.

In the words of Dr. David Dunning of Cornell, who identified this cognitive bias along with Dr. Justin Kruger now at the NYU Stern School of Business, for communities and individuals so-addicted, “the trouble with ignorance is that it feels so much like expertise.”

Another reality for communities susceptible to “big game hunting” is not just the massive sums it consumes or siphons but the even more significant investments those dollars could have made if directed instead to fostering and making sustainable a community’s distinctiveness.

The great irony of “big game hunting” is that it isn’t “thinking big” at all but thinking zero sum and a failure of faith that a community can be inherently worthy of love.

Nothing’s Really New

A friend of mine from my Alaska days in the 1980’s, having read this blog, emailed recently that I haven’t changed a bit.

He reminded me that on an airplane trip we took together over the North Pole to harvest potential business from Europe early in that decade, I did something I often do today in this blog.

He had watched me go through a huge brief case of reading materials, tearing pages from periodicals and using a handheld Epson device (regarded as the first laptop) to create notes and then print them out on ticker tape to staple to clippings for routing or mailing after I got home.

Running a community destination marketing organization requires gathering marketing intelligence wherever possible but my friend observed that in most cases, I was routing the clippings to other people in community, most unrelated to my former visitor-centric career.

A best practices consultant who interviewed several hundred community leaders hypothesized that this habit of circulating information was one of the reasons our organization was considered so much more relevant than peer organizations were in other communities.

I do enjoy it so I guess it is no surprise that I do something similar in retirement now with these essays.

Marketers for any enterprise should be on the forefront of trends and changes but far too many lag behind even within their own organization.  This is clear in the USA report from the “Annual Global CEO Survey” by PwC.

CEOs were the only members of the C-suite to cite technological advances as the trend that will be most disruptive in the future.  In the US, only 36% of CEOs believed that those responsible for their marketing and brand management were prepared to make the changes necessary.

I suspect this is why you often see marketing departments so out of touch with their organization’s sustainability efforts, such as when they use roadside billboards which require huge amounts of deforestation, ultimately reducing carbon sequestration and fostering pollution.

Of even more concern to CEOs may be that only 20% believed their R&D divisions were prepared for the coming changes that will be wrought by technology.

Looking at the verbatims, those surveyed have very large concerns. These are the ones pursued by those I refer to as “big game hunters” on the supply-driven side of economic development (as opposed to those working on the demand-side such as tourism) which they hope to land in their communities of states.

Even though small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) were hit much harder during the recession, they remain where the action is.  The 23 million SMBs in America (fewer than 100 employees) generate 54% of the sales, provide 55% of the jobs and fill up 30-50% of all commercial space.

Since the 1970s, SMBs have accounted for 66% of all net new jobs.  About 98% or 22.5 million are independent, locally owned concerns that account for 54% of all U.S. sales.

They are under threat from chains for which 600,000-plus franchised small businesses in the U.S. account for 40% of all retail sales and provide 8 million jobs.

It isn’t just technological trends where big business marketers are unprepared.  Studies show big business often doesn’t understand small and medium-size businesses which for 70% are their customers.

The battle ground for this misunderstanding is on Main Street.  Part of the solution is better exchange and sharing of marketing intelligence and data.

Many local organizations that represent small businesses eschew strategy plans in favor of frenetically running around in an attempt to find a “parade” and then desperately seeking to be at the head or at least be the convener.

They have no patience for being at a table of equals if they can’t dominate the conversation.  They fail to see that a strategic plan is merely a pathway to make it easier to spot and react to trends as they arise.

They especially fail to grasp that today’s new breed of strategic thinkers see into the future by analyzing the past, sometimes referred to as “temporal planning,” something I stumbled onto decades ago by virtue of fusing my college major into my eventual four-decade career in community marketing.

But the aversion to strategic thinking among many organizations portending to represent business is why businesses of all sizes - but especially small businesses - have lost patience with and increasingly find these organizations irrelevant, leaving them to devolve into places where only “whiners” congregate.

Identifying and responding to trends is best done when organizations share and treat each other not only as equals but with a deeply respected division of effort and expertise.

Strategic partnering such as this works best when all eyes are trying to spot trends regardless of relevance to one partner or another but then quickly to shuttle them to the partner for which they are most relevant.

I realize this is annoying for generalists, who having been successful at one thing assume they are now expert at everything, dismissing organizations with expertise specifically suited.

In parting, I’ll forward 2014 trends by Sparks & Honey which takes an ecosystem approach to 80 areas of trend and culture.  If you find this amazing, you should see one of their custom reports.

Share them with strategic partners at a table of equals and assign which organizations will take point based on expertise and focus.

My favorite?  I’m retired.  My expertise now is narrowed to sharing.

Call it “content marketing.”  Just don’t refer to it as part of the new “sharing/collaborative economy.”

That isn’t new.  Nothing really is.