My 1966 Destiny And The Friend I Left Behind!

Maybe I was destined to attend the huge Idaho Falls High School my senior year. I had been born seventeen years earlier in that city of then 34,000 after my Mom went into labor and my Dad had to whisk her 50 miles south from our Henry’s Fork ranch on an extremely hot July afternoon because there was no hospital in nearby Ashton at that time.

I think I was meant to attend IFHS that year to prepare me for college the following year in many ways other than academics. That’s where I first took typing class to give me a way around the essential tremor that was already degrading my ability to handwrite.

I expanded beyond sports to hone a skill in forensics and I don’t mean the CSI kind. I mean the forensic art of competitive individual and team debate. Some call it advocacy forensics because you must learn to debate and refute both sides of an issue.

By the way, the debate topic nationwide in 1966 was:

Resolved: That the federal government should adopt a program of compulsory arbitration in labor management disputes in basic industries.

I think I may have also been destined to go to IFHS that last year to learn better how to deal with the large student body I was to encounter in college the next year. At well more than a thousand students, IF as it’s known was many times larger than any school I had previously attended and larger than the entire town near where I spent my early years.

But I’m sure I was also meant to go there to connect with Ronnie Park and we instantly became best friends. Ronnie was “cool” but not as in the typical “cool cliques” that had already hardened to much for anyone to crack in only a year.

We both drove old Chevy’s, mine a ‘57 and Ronnie’s a ‘55. When his ‘55 blew up, he was one of the first people in Idaho with a Datsun (today called Nissan.) That’s Ronnie in the photo to the left standing next to that car, which seemed pretty exotic at the time.

We both liked girls and rock and roll. I liked one girl in particular but Ron was more elusive. We traveled two hundred miles south to Farmington, Utah that summer to see The Rolling Stones and The Animals perform live at the Lagoon Amusement Park Patio Gardens to an audience of only a few thousand people.

We were Beatles and Beach Boys fans but the edginess of The Stones and The Animals formed the perfect soundtrack to a year when war and protest filled our living rooms and the draft loomed ahead.

Ronnie and I made several college visits together including the University of Idaho, Utah State University and Idaho State University. We had planned to visit the University of Wyoming over in Laramie but the engine in my ‘57 Chevy blew up and we had to be towed home.

That summer before college we worked together up in the 3-million-acre Caribou-Targhee National Forest, near my birthplace and ancestral ranch, fighting that year’s huge outbreak of Mountain Pine Beetles by spraying the soon-to-be banned DDT straight up into huge Lodgepole Pines in that nook between Yellowstone Park and the Idaho side of the Teton Mountains.

When we got back to IF, our paths parted as suddenly as they had crossed when I was lucky enough to get into Brigham Young University down in Provo, Utah where I wouldn’t be admitted by today’s academic standards, but managed to graduate magna cum laude. Ronnie headed to ISU in Pocatello.

I probably wouldn’t have adjusted to going to school with 20,000 other students at BYU had it not been for that year at IFHS. A lot of kids had difficulty making the adjustment to schools that large including one of my much brighter cousins. Enrollment at BYU had doubled in size over the six years prior to my freshman year and continued to rapidly grow before leveling out a little more than 20 years later at 32,000+.

Ten years after Ronnie and I parted ways, I was living and working in Spokane, Washington when I received a clipping from the Idaho Falls Post-Register anonymously in the mail, maybe from that former girl friend. Under what seemed like a huge headline, “Ronnie Park Found Dead,” the article reported that he had been living in Ucon, a little town north of Idaho Falls on US 20 leading back north to our ranch, and working nearby.

He had killed himself with a 20-gauge shotgun, leaving a widow named Dianna. It confirmed he had attended ISU and served four and half years in the Idaho National Guard.

It hit me hard and still does with more than a little guilt that we hadn’t stayed in touch, that I wasn’t there to dissipate the unfathomable anger and despair that can motivate suicide.

I passed on the 10-year reunion for the IF Class of ‘66 held a few months later and I have not attended any since.

Last week marked the anniversary of when I received that clipping the week after Ronnie’s death.

R.I.P my friend.

The Tyranny Of 30 People In Orange T-Shirts

A local elected official was overheard dismissing the fact shown in scientific surveys that more than 95% of Durham residents agree or strongly agree that “community appearance” should be a high community priority by stating that “no irate people are calling elected officials about appearance.”

Too many of our elected officials today fall into this trap.  I often joke that it seems to only take 30 people showing up in “orange” t-shirts to run something through many city council or county commission meetings these days and especially, I guess, if they happen to be angry or fearful about something.

Officials need to remember that mad is just a form of being sad and sad is a form of mad.   Often there are far greater numbers of people expressing their anger through sadness and dismay than by being mad.  Anger does not equate to activism.

Long before tea partiers we seemed to have turned far too many  elected officials at all levels into adrenalin junkies.  Some now feel disrespected if you don’t call them at home at night as though that were a litmus test that something is “really” important.

The breakdown of representative democracy is when it isn’t representative, when it is hijacked by irate minorities with only anecdotes for backup, when leadership is substituted for short-term, pay-back or back-room agendas.

During my the nearly-four-decade-long career in community/destination marketing from which I retired back in 2009, I was primarily in what Peter Sandman terms the “calm down” business, but I balanced it the many times when I shifted into what he terms the “outrage business,” especially when Durham was being treated unfairly or when fear or money co-opted others from speaking up.

The difference is that I always had data and information to back up the outrage.  As a friend of mine noted some years ago when a $40 million decision was transacted in her community without so much as a public hearing or needs assessment, that “far too many decisions today are made with one piece of paper as backup while others languish with a file cabinets full of back up.”

Elected leaders, public servants and business leaders need to spend more time “listening” to data and information including scientific, generalizable opinion and break loose from the tyranny of back-room push and shove artists or late night telephone lobbying and yes, 30 people showing up in orange t-shirts.

Unless they also produce some sound, generalizable, scientific research data as back up.

Per Capita Water Use Peaked 30 Years Ago

Got some plants in just in time for the drenching we received this week.  For some interesting perspective on water use, click here or on the image visible to the right to see the complete infographic I spotted this weekend.

Even though my landscape is 99% natural, my water bill shot up nearly 1000% at times last year, even when Durham’s reservoirs appeared to be at or near capacity with water occasionally spilling over, so I guess I was paying my share for water actually used downstream in other communities.

I’m just kidding but that does put a new meaning to the term “double dipping.”

I emailed and called after I paid and folks were concerned and going to check.  I didn’t hear back and I know they were swamped.  Anyway, my philosophy is it all comes out even along he line.  I’ve been blessed and water is still the best deal going.

The piece of this infographic that caught my attention when I first studied it in this month’s Fast Company Magazine is that per capita water use peaked in the USA more than thirty years ago and today it is much less than it was in 1955.

Appears we’re heading in the right direction.  Much more than my water bill, I’m concerned by the part of the infographic showing 4 out of every 10 people worldwide who either don’t have access to clean water at all or must walk to retrieve it.

41 Songs That Crossed My Mind As I Crossed The Country

A lot of songs kept crossing my mind during my two different 6,000-mile cross-country road trips during the last six months.

As Mugs (I was solo on the trips except for my English Bulldog) crossed the USA via four different routes, we were able to put places and landscapes with a lot of songs I’ve heard over the years.

Below are YouTube and other links to just 41 songs that came to mind, in no particular geographic order (enjoy) :

Bobby Bare 500 Miles Away From Home

Emmylou Harris Boulder to Birmingham

Josh Ritter Idaho

Pam Tillis Maybe It Was Memphis

Collin Raye Little Rock

Merle Haggard’s Vietnam War anthem Okie from Muskogee

George Strait’s Amarillo By Morning

Ruby Jane Smith Beautiful You, Happy Me and Valentine

Jon Bon Jovi’s Santa Fe

Glenn Campbell By The Time I Get To Phoenix

Gary Puckett & Union Gap (WA) Over You

Bobby Bare Detroit City

Asleep at the Wheel Route 66

Garth Brooks Beaches of Cheyenne

Dan Seals Everything That Glitters

Marie Osmond and Dan Seals Meet Me In Montana

John Denver Country Roads

Dwight Yoakum Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues

Mormon Tabernacle Choir Come Come Ye Saints

John Denver Rocky Mountain High

Tim McGraw Telluride

Judy Collins Someday Soon

Dave Loggins Please Come To Boston

Chris LeDoux Take Me Back To Old Wyoming

Sawyer Brown Six Days On The Road

Elvis Presley Blue Moon Over Kentucky

Sissel Shenandoah

Blackwater Union Missouri Song

Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard Poncho & Lefty

Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys

Anne Murray Tennessee Waltz

Roger Miller Hot Rod Lincoln

Dar Williams Iowa

R. Dean Taylor Indiana Wants Me

Nanci Griffith Deadwood, South Dakota

Kansas Carry On My Wayward Son

Alvin Youngblood Hart Illinois Blues

Gillian Welch Look At Miss Ohio

R.Carlos Nakai & Peter Kater Nez Perse Flight Song

Mormon Tabernacle Choir God Bless America

Scott Ainsle Bull City Blues

If Ever Advertising Was Going To Be Able To Rehab Community Image–This Was It!

The reasons advertising doesn’t work to promote or rehabilitate the image of a community are legion including, to name just two, a lack of credibility (it is a community talking about itself) and it is long proven to merely harden or affirm both those who are already positive or negative.

But if advertising ever had a chance to work for this purpose, it was last month when Chrysler ran a spectacular television ad for its hometown Detroit on the biggest stage possible for advertising, during the Super Bowl.

The ad was also perfectly executed with authentic, genuine and compelling imagery, memorable background music and voice-over and emotive story-telling.

While unrealistic at this level for even the most adequately funded community/destination marketing effort, if advertising was ever going to work to change or rehabilitate community image, this could be it.

But it didn’t work.

Is this heresy from a past CLIO award winner for the television portion of the “Wild About Anchorage!” campaign, still in evidence there after nearly 30 years?

No, and I’ll explain why from the point of view of someone also fortunate enough to find a formula that helped turn around another community’s image.

But the Chrysler/Detroit ad probably didn’t hurt either.  What place wouldn’t treasure one of its big employers telling its story?

Before I explain my take in the bullets below, here are two excellent blogs from advertising and communication experts, one by Joan Sinopoli, Senior VP of Harris Interactive’s Brand and Communications and another by Laura Reis, President of Reis & Reis and author of Reis’ Pieces.

• Advertising doesn’t change minds.  Only a slow-build earned media effort based on solid, objective information and interlaced with relentless brand management including vigilant brand defense has the potential to sway opinions and change minds and it takes a long time.

 

• Image ads worked as public service announcements in Anchorage, because the community didn’t have an image problem.  It didn’t have an image at all so it just needed a little “wind”  to release pent up resident pride for which advertising can be perfect where, as in Anchorage at the time, there is little risk that it will spill over to harden negatives elsewhere.

 

• The Chrysler/Detroit ad may have been better suited, had it just been run in Detroit where community pride was recently benchmarked at 24% compared to 38% on average for the 26 communities studied in the three year Gallup/Knight Foundation poll - slightly higher than results from similar studies of resident pride in Raleigh and Charlotte.

 

• While the Chrysler/Detroit ad resonated primarily among Michiganders, even deployed there, studies show it would  probably have just hardened existing negative and positive perceptions.  Even an ad as excellent as this one is just too blunt an instrument to sway opinions.  But at home is where Detroit must first improve perceptions.

 

• The 24% pride level in Detroit may be pushed a bit higher by the fact that it has loss of a fourth of its population over the past decade, if as surveys show, negatives are less attached to place.  To put Detroit and the communities benchmarked above in perspective, 91% of Durham residents are proud or very proud of their community, a 17 to 1 positive-to-negative ratio, compared to 1 to 1 ratios or less for the other communities.

 

• Durham’s image problem was both more complex and much less pervasive than Detroit’s.  While Detroit’s has apparently metastasized nationwide, Durham’s image problem was always centered in two nearby counties.  Durham’s national image was strong and primarily needed damage control and brand management to limit any contamination from or barriers presented by negative opinions in neighboring communities.

 

• Advertising is a bit like “friendly-fire” when it comes to community image.  Due to low credibility, it backfires with residents where pride, image and attachment are already high and with external populations, much to the consternation of those always drawn to big, showy ad campaigns, testing show that ads merely harden existing negatives and positives, even where there is a means to deploy it that precisely.

 

• With resident pride at 91%, Durham residents just needed affirmation and empowerment-communication tools such as the precision of earned media and a “perceived injustice” element to brand management and defense.

 

• Paid advertising has a role which is similar to the a “wind” that harvests inquiries from interest generated by the more rehabilitating and promotional “sun” of other tactics such as earned media and brand management.

 

I’ve deliberately over-simplified community image to issues of pride and negative or positive perceptions or image.  There are several other indicators such as aesthetic perceptions of appearance and sense of place, acceptance of other cultures, ethnicities and lifestyles and community engagement.

Everything begins though with sound marketing intelligence including scientific, generalizable research that pinpoints a community’s image both among internal and external audiences.  Every community has an image or perception issue, often below the false security of anecdotal expressions or proclamations by officials.

Only marketing intelligence can unwrap it.  Only marketing intelligence can benchmark any progress.  Only marketing intelligence can suggest what communications tactics or mix of tactics to use.