The Three Perceptual Audiences Some Communities Face

It would seem that the official community-destination marketing arm (DMO) for Durham, North Carolina has it made.  By a margin of 13 to 1, its residents have a positive image of their community.  By more than 18 to 1 they are proud of their community, both of which are many times higher than national benchmarks.

Perceptions among internal stakeholders are pivotal to any attempt to leverage a community’s inherent brand into visitor-centric economic and cultural development because they make or break credibility.  But residents are only one of three perceptual challenges facing DMOs.

The second is with prospective visitors and Durham performs well there as well.  At nearly 80%, Durham has the highest positive image among North Carolinians of any of the major cities, a position it has held since the late 1990s when measurement began.

For instance, compared to nearby Raleigh, North Carolina, the state capital, Durham’s negative image among North Carolinians is 87% lower and its positive image is 27% higher. At home, within its own county, Durham’s negative image among residents is 34% lower than Raleigh’s is among Wake County residents.

Durham also has the highest average image in the state among similar-size or larger communities.  Equally important, at 10.3%, it is within 2 points of having the lowest negative rating statewide and it comes within a point of having of having the highest positive to negative ratio.

Durham also has an incredible 11 to 1 positive to negative ratio nationwide as a potential visitor destination, all of which is to say that Durham is in a good position in the minds of external audiences.

So where does its stand with the third perceptual challenge many DMOs may face?

When someone visits Durham, North Carolina, they are twice as likely to encounter a non-resident who works here as they are a resident of Durham working in the facilities and establishments they frequent or the activities in which they participate.

For instance, nearly as many Wake County residents work in Durham as do Durham residents, and studies show they are two and half times more likely to be negative toward Durham.  This means visitors are several times more likely to encounter someone who is negative about Durham, even though, these people may “walk and talk” like a Durham resident.

Most communities have a much smaller share of non-residents or they dominate centric regions.  Raleigh residents working in Durham are three times the proportion of Durham residents working in Wake County or in just Raleigh proper.

Raleigh residents may have a lower image of their community but studies show they are more centric.  So if a Durham visitor asks a question of a worker, who happens to live in Raleigh, the answer given becomes less about where they work and more about them and where they live.

Even though they have a much higher image of and pride in their community, Durham residents in general are less centric.  Any assessment of this third audience by a DMO must take into account not only workforce patterns such as people who work but do not live in a community but also the tendencies of those non-resident populations.

Keep in mind that Durham is the core city of a four-county metro area which taken together with the much more spread out and larger Raleigh-Cary metro to the east is often referred to as a poly-centric region known as the Research Triangle.

Not only is there no dominant “center” to the region but only 3% of the visitors to any of these communities are likely to take in more than one on the same trip.  The condition known as cognitive distance friction, means that to visitors, a mile during a trip seems more like twenty back home.

Even if non-residents working in a community are not negative about it, their lack of knowledge can be interpreted by visitors as negative.  This is especially true, as mystery shopper observations and analysis reveal, when having little local knowledge of a destination community, they are prone to refer visitors to where they live instead, away from the destination the visitors are are visiting.

The result is not only inconvenience and confusion for the visitor but a tremendous loss of visitor spending to the host community from this visit and possibly return visits as well as a dilution of the destination’s brand and credibility.

Community-destination marketing is about informing and changing perceptions and for most communities it involves much more than simply the perceptions of visitors.

Distinguishing Homelessness from Panhandling

Unique among her peers here or elsewhere, the community-destination marketing organization exec (DMO) where I live ventured out on a cold, rain-soaked night last month to take part in a nation-wide census of individuals and families who are homeless.

Part of its overarching brand or personality is that Durham, North Carolina is a caring community and one reason its marketing arm is considered so relevant by residents is that its involvement penetrates far beyond visitor-centric economic and cultural development.

However, homelessness including the small portion related to panhandling are often issues in communities across the nation that directly relate to a community’s overall appeal.

People confuse homelessness and panhandling, but an in-depth study in Clark County which includes Las Vegas, Nevada in 2007 found that 81% of those who are homeless never panhandle while 79% of panhandlers are unsheltered, often because they don’t qualify due to conditions such as substance abuse or mental illness.

The 19% of homeless who do panhandle are more likely not to have completed high school, to be unsheltered and to have fallen into homelessness repeatedly.

Greatly complicating efforts to resolve both homelessness and panhandling are “givers.

In Clark County, Nevada, with a population of 1.9 million at the time of the study,  panhandlers “earned” $24 million annually, one-third from 1.9 million residents and two-thirds from a combination of visitors and commuters.

Translated to the population of Durham County, that would be $3.4 million given to panhandlers each year, $1.1 million by residents and $2.3 million distributed by visitors and non-residents who work here.  Because two out of every three jobs here are held by non-residents, that proportion may be even higher.

In the Nevada study, about 62% of residents there were “givers” to panhandlers, 42% in the form of cash.  Half of the panhandlers were over 45 years of age and 69% were men and half were white.

Three-fourths were living alone, 9.4% with a spouse or partner and 2.8% with children.  More than one in five were military veterans and 70% had a disabling condition such as substance abuse and mental or physical disability.

Panhandlers in the study were 81% homeless, 32% living in a shelter or housing program, 11% with friends and relatives, while 8% lived in their own room, apartment or house.  Nearly 6 out of 10 (58%) were chronically homeless.

In North Carolina, the homeless counted on January 30th tallied 10,290.  It was interesting to note that 19% were mentally ill and 31% were substance abusers, compared to 17% and 38% of panhandlers in the Nevada study.

Another 40% of the panhandlers suffered from depression and 7.6% post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD.)

In the Las Vegas/Clark County study, 70% of the panhandlers received free meals, 37% had bus passes, 38% used emergency shelters and 26% used health services, while 53% received food stamps and 8% received social security.

More than 50% had panhandled a year or more including more than a quarter who had been panhandling more than three years. One in ten had panhandled more than five years.  On average they panhandled 17 days a month but 30% more than 26 days a month.

Panhandlers in the Nevada study averaged 4 hours a day and one in five worked at it 8 hours or more a day.  Nearly a third relied on “regular givers.”  One in ten panhandled to supplement work or government benefits (15% also work at jobs including 3% full-time,) 30% are unable to work, 20% can’t get hired and 23% don’t have transportation to get to work.

Three quarters of panhandlers in the Nevada study “made” less than $400 a month from panhandling, 20% supplement that with recycling as I often see a person do who regularly empties recycling carts of items that are especially valuable prior to the arrival of regular crews.

Another 8.% get additional funds from family or friends.  All tolled, 75% earn $750 or less a month.

Resolving homelessness and issues surrounding panhandling are not easy, but it is clear from the Nevada study that “givers” are part of the problem not the solution.

When asked if they would re-direct donations to local aid organizations that they give to panhandlers, 42% said no or were ambivalent (14%.)  Even 37% of those who do not give the panhandlers, rejected the idea or were ambivalent.

Any effort to address these two very different but overlapping conditions must involve educating residents, non-residents commuters and students as well as visitors.  A community’s DMO can also be an important partner.

Still many people do not respond to logic, or reason, or data.  The City of Durham, working with neighborhood activists is doing the right thing in my opinion.  Effective, January 16th, new rules took effect to curb and manage roadside solicitation including panhandling.

It is still short of a ban, which in my opinion and experience is warranted, but newspapers have argued for many years that this would restrict “free speech,” because their distributors would not be able to hawk papers from medians and along roadsides.

This is an incredible stretch but the threat of lawsuits is intimidating to otherwise community-wide efforts to address the issue of panhandling.

The new Durham rules about roadside solicitation are an excellent step forward and programs such as Durham, Can You Spare A Change by the InterNeighborhood Council of Durham are helping “givers” understand much better alternatives to panhandling.

Hopefully, a coalition to end homelessness involving the City and County of Durham plus a continuum of various non-profits will soon find its legs and begin to make similar progress.

One hopeful sign sign from January’s census is that all of Durham’s homeless are now sheltered, making it easier to identify and address places such as secluded cardboard tent cities where those panhandlers who are unsheltered may congregate.

In the meantime, especially key to the solution in Durham will be cooperation from residents, non-residents who hold two out of every three jobs here as well as nearly 8 million visitors.  Hopefully, the community’s DMO exec will continue to play a role.

Diversity of Assets Key To Leisure Travel Appeal

Many years ago domestic leisure travel transcended travel for business purposes (including conventions and meetings) for trips taken in the U.S.  The breakdown is now 78% leisure and 22% business (including 10% conventions and meeting.)

There are some interesting facts in last month’s bi-annual tracking snapshot of leisure travelers by Destination Analytics, Inc. regarding Americans who take trips of at least 100 miles round trip.

Interestingly,  nearly 34% take in historical places and museums compared to 24.8% who visit a state or local park, 20.2% who visit art galleries/museums, 18.2% who attend a concert, play or musical and 17.4% who attend a sporting event.

All of these and many others transcend the percentage of overall travelers who attend conventions.  This is just one reason that destination communities must seek diversity of appeal as they evolve, while staying true to their unique sense of place and organic placed-based assets.

This also illustrates why a community’s destination marketing arm  (DMO) must focus on branding the overall destination for visitor-centric economic and cultural development and resist being hijacked by any of number of entities that always seem to believe their type of business or facility deserves favored treatment.

More than 72% of leisure travelers use a mobile device for travel information during their trips and 23.3% already use tablets such as the iPad.  Surprisingly 49% still take along a laptop.

The average leisure traveler takes 4.6 trips.  Nearly 6 in 10 trips are day-trips compared to 50% of overall travel so it is incredulous why any community would tolerate a DMO that is still only focused on overnight stays if serious about reaping a full share of benefits from visitation.

Similarly, leisure travelers average only 1.1 trips by air each year so DMOs and communities that focus disproportionately on airports as the mode of arrival are likely to never reap their community’s full potential of visitor-centric economic and cultural development.  They are also likely to undervalue the importance of gateways and wayfinding signage.

A key part of a DMO’s role is to get a destination on the list for consideration by travelers.  But according to the study, more than 5 out of every 10 leisure travelers also rely on a combination of DMO resources both prior to and during a trip including website, print publication and destination-specific mobile site/app.

The vast majority of leisure trips are less than three days so it is crucial that these resources are designed to encourage and empower future return visits.

Forward-thinking DMOs long ago began to measure all visitors rather than just those who travel at least 50 miles to their destination.  As more do, organizations such as Destination Analysts, Inc. will be able to broaden The State of the American Traveler.

Until then, overview such as this are invaluable for benchmarks against which to compare destination-specific results.

For much more comprehensive results from The State of the American Traveler Survey, contact Destination Analysts not to be confused with Destination Analytics which is also an excellent resource.

Negative Link Between Campaign Donations & Shareholder Value

The reason many in business and government are skeptical of research is that many of them use “pimped opinion” as a substitute, and so they find it hard not to assume everyone else does.  Especially lobbyists.

Part of content curation such as I do with this blog and that I practiced during my now-concluded 40-year career as a community-destination marketing (DM) exec is to look carefully behind a study to make certain it was produced and vetted by experts and if possible peer reviewed.

Of particular concern are so-called white papers often promoted by partisan think-tanks where even more careful scrutiny is always warranted.

The DMO in my adopted home of Durham, North Carolinas has earned a reputation for objective analysis based on sound data.  This should never be taken for granted.  It can be lost in heartbeat if not deeply entrenched in organizational culture and governance and insulated from anecdotal whimsy.

Last November, purposely held I assume until after the election, an excellent peer-reviewed study was published by Harvard law professor John C. Coates who specializes in corporate law and governance (shown in this blog.)

His study found “in most industries, political activity correlates negatively with measures of shareholder power, positively with signs of agency costs, and negatively with shareholder value.”

The exceptions are businesses such as outdoor billboard companies, where any value is wholly reliant on governmental decisions and regulations regarding tax payer-funded roadways and other government-dependent industries such as defense or those heavily regulated in the public interest such as utilities.

If the failure of massive injections of anonymous corporate donations into the election process wasn’t enough to confirm that these dollars were an unwise wise investment, Coates’ data added an emphatic exclamation point.

Highly threatened, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (not to be confused in any way with local chambers of commerce) immediately dusted off a long-discredited white paper that had never been peer-reviewed and was produced by non other than a lobbyist.

Unfortunately for too many casual observers, this meant “touché, all over again” and a “tie goes to the runner,” right?  Fortunately, Professor Coates opened up with both barrels in a letter this month to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Coates’ findings undermine a pivotal assumption by the Supreme Court in Citizens United.  Hopefully, SCOTUS justices have time to read and not just write.  Regardless, the Coates study should be required reading for corporate shareholders and all C-suite executives.

All Marketing Should Be Localized

I mostly agreed with an excellent essay posted last fall by NPR’s Scott Simon on the seemingly sudden overuse of the word “curate.”

However, even in its original Latin or Middle English, curate has always been a term broader than is used in museums and the perfect description for the essence of community-destination marketing organizations (DMO), first established in the late 1800s at the dawn of the Progressive Era and more recently my profession during a now-concluded 40-year career.

Content curation is also what I do each day in retirement as I research and write the essays posted on this blog.  The only reason Linkedin.com lists me among the top 10% of profiles viewed by its 200 million members is that readers there seek to know who is behind the content I curate.

For any community DMO though, only the tip of the proverbial iceberg is curating information to aid decisions by visitors including leisure and business travelers, group planners, newcomers and relocating executives.

Maybe even more central is curating market intelligence to assist businesses, and not just local businesses or those relocating or expanding. This need is only growing more and more intense.

At the close of 1989 as I was leading the jumpstart of the DMO for Durham, North Carolina, only one billion of the earth’s consumers lived in cities or surrounding metropolitan areas, such as the one for which Durham is core.

According to the McKinsey Global Institute, within the next twelve years that number will reach four billion, with two billion alone in emerging market metros which will inject $25 trillion into the global economy.

It is no wonder that community-destination marketing is exploding globally.

A survey among members of the worldwide Chief Marketing Officer Council (CMO) shows that 59% believe that localized marketing is “essential to business growth and profitability.”  For 33% the biggest challenge is lack of localized content and for 31% the deficit is access to in-market intelligence.

The study also found that 6 out of 10 these global marketers are over-reliant on “hearsay data,” often gleaned from water-cooler gossip during visits by advance development teams during initial investigations of a market.

Savvy marketers know to turn to a local community’s DMOs for localized market information and content.  Savvy DMOs know that for their community to succeed they will also need to assertively power this information through the obfuscation that is created by huge, obsolete, so-called “designated market areas DMA.”

These relics are perpetuated by some television and radio stations as well as by many newspapers and magazines in hopes that it will continue to grossly exaggerate the amount they can charge for advertising.

The DMA in which Durham is lumped sprawls across as many as 23 counties and parts of three states including up to a third of North Carolina, hardly a common market from a consumer viewpoint.

In reality, while these massive media designations may be good for ad sales, they blind businesses by obscuring the existence of organically distinct community business climates/markets.  Unwittingly gross DMA-level data clouds any true understanding of true consumer markets such as Durham, while providing fodder for anyone wishing to undermine it.

DMAs this vast also result in short-handed newsrooms which are then drawn disproportionately to easy-to-cover topics such as crime. Far too stretched to cover topics evenly from community to community or to add context that would mitigate over-generalized alarm, they fuel stereotypes.

This imbalance along with lack of context, in turn fuels exaggerated water-cooler conversations, which then results in what consumer research experts such as Dr. John Lynch are quoted as terming “focalization.”

This is a condition where for many listening to water-cooler pontifications, the brain’s “intake valve” virtually shuts down to other aspects about a community, particular in places such as Durham where 3 out of 5 workers are non-residents.

As Durham’s DMO commenced operation, it took a few years of analysis by communications and media experts, followed up by scientific research to document not only the existence and nature of what was undermining perceptions of Durham, but to lock on to greatly amplified content curation as the strategy to turn this condition around.

Although the effort must be perpetual, the remarkable turn-around in Durham’s image was spearheaded by its DMO largely between the years 1993 and 2000 as documented by annual tracking surveys. 

What made this comprehensive and often-grassrooted effort even more remarkable is that it occurred over a period when the Internet emerged in popular use, not only making non-curated information ubiquitous, but also “fire-hosing” the intensity and proliferation of misinformation.

Anyone dating the turnaround as more recent may be confusing Durham’s overall image with that of just the downtown area.  However, it is probably not coincidental that the rehabilitation of downtown’s reputation commenced in earnest only after the tide had been turned on restoration of Durham’s overall image.

Regardless, the role of content curation was strategically central to both.  Many experts including NYU professor, researcher and author Clay Shirky and most recently best-selling author Daniel Pink have dissected the ingredients of good content curation.

Shirky often notes that content curation is more than just aggregation or information seeking, it is about “synchronizing a community,” something for which Durham’s DMO is now recognized as a best practice.

Pink builds on the “seek-make sense-share” model evolved by blogger Beth Kanter based on inspiration from Harold Jarche who writes about workplace innovation.

As you can see, content curation can have different layers.  I remember a friend of mine who would often call me for research data, then tweak the numbers slightly and use them unattributed in news quotes and with local officials.  My friend was breaking a cardinal rule of curation which is crediting sources while benefiting from another, the act of sharing through redistribution.

Curating content involves gathering, qualifying, and distilling information, and often this includes conducting original research studies.  It also requires making sense of the information and putting it in context, followed by developing tools by which it can be shared and distributed and redistributed.

On behalf of a city, town or county, it is something for which community-destination marketing organizations are uniquely qualified by both purpose and focus.

However, content curation should never include the purging of troubling information but instead the integration of it within the fuller picture.  It is also a perversion to masquerade content curation as a means to merely perpetuate unsubstantiated and anecdotal opinions or observations.

Search engine optimization is part of sharing and distributing curated content but as Shirky notes, making sense of it is a distinctly human endeavor.  It also involves vigilance and relentless follow up with the sources of misinformation with requests for correction and offers to substitute it with valid resources.

Local businesses and chains with local operations or franchises are learning just as the CMO study confirms that consumers, even when they are visitors, focus locally.  Seven years ago, studies began documenting that 70% of U.S. households used the Internet when shopping locally for products and services.

This is intensifying even more as 4 in 10 have migrated to mobile platforms to conduct those searches.  The search engine Bing finds that 70% of mobile searches are followed up by action within an hour.

The search result that rises above the din is curated content provided by a community’s official destination marketing organization.