10262020 Marketing Committee Minutes
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Nevada Commission on Tourism | Marketing Committee October 26, 2020 | Minutes NEVADA COMMISSION ON TOURISM Marketing Committee Monday, October 26, 2020 The Nevada Commission on Tourism held a Marketing Committee meeting at 1 p.m. on October 26, 2020 via Zoom. Call to Oder Fletch Brunelle, Chair, called the meeting to order at 1 p.m. Committee Members Present Carl Ribaudo Christina Erny Cynthia Mun Deny Dotson Fletch Brunelle Committee Member Absent/Excused N/A Staff Present Brenda Scolari Christian Passink Jessica Grundy Kyle Shulz M.E. Kawchack Tracie Barnthouse Guests Present Fahlgren Mortine Noble Studios Meeting BRUNELLE: Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call to order the Marketing Subcommittee meeting of the Nevada Commission on Tourism. It's October 26, 2020 at 1:00 PM, sharp. Can you please confirm that this meeting was properly noticed and posted? GRUNDY: This is Jessica Grundy. Yes, it was. BRUNELLE: All right. Thank you. M.E., can you please call roll? KAWCHACK: I can. Thank you. Fletch Brunelle. BRUNELLE: Here. KAWCHACK: Christina Erny. ERNY: Here. KAWCHACK: Carl Ribaudo. P a g e 1 | 34 Nevada Commission on Tourism | Marketing Committee October 26, 2020 | Minutes RIBAUDO: Here. KAWCHACK: Deny Dotson. DOTSON: Here. KAWCHACK: Cynthia Mun. MUN: Here. KAWCHACK: Great. We have a quorum. Thank you. BRUNELLE: Let's move to item B public comments. Is anyone on the call for public comments? GRUNDY: I don't think so. BRUNELLE: Okay. With that, let's move to agenda item C, approval of minutes. This is for July 28, 2020 meeting. Are there any proposals by way of motion for any matter relating to those minutes? If not, I'll entertain a motion to approve those minutes. ERNY: I'll second. BRUNELLE: All those in favor, say aye. COMMITTEE: Aye. BRUNELLE: Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. For the August 10th, 2020 meeting, are there any proposals by way of a motion for any matter relating to those minutes? If not, entertain a motion for a second to approve those minutes. ERNY: I'll second. BRUNELLE: All those in favor. Aye. COMMITTEE: Aye. BRUNELLE: Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously. We can move on to agenda item D, snapshot of the industry. Wait, did I miss something? KAWCHACK: You know what? I can do opening remarks. I'm sorry. BRUNELLE: Yes, please. P a g e 2 | 34 Nevada Commission on Tourism | Marketing Committee October 26, 2020 | Minutes KAWCHACK: I'll just do a really quick opening. Today's a little bit different. Thank you everybody for being here today. Today's meeting, as you notice, it only has discussion items. Aside from approval of minutes, we have no action items today because the upcoming Commission meeting, we don't have any action items on that meeting. Today will be informational, but as always, we welcome your insights and thoughts and questions on the programs that we're presenting today. At last quarter's commission meeting, we had approval to move forward with a $300,000 budget for Discover Your Nevada and the recommendation was accepted with a direction to proceed with more money if budgets allow. The Division of Tourism was scheduled to be heard by the Interim Finance Committee on October 22nd for the acceptance of Cares Relief Act Funding or CRF. Hence the timing of this meeting, our hearing was expedited. Those funds were granted last month, which is a great thing, but as a result, we're able to pivot quickly and enhance the buys that were already in the works. We've worked with Fahlgren Mortine on the challenging tasks of building a substantial in-state plan to be extended through December 30th of this year. The Discover Your Nevada campaign will allow us to educate Nevadans about the offerings available in our state, about what is open, what is safe and how local businesses may continue to be supported. As we move into the next calendar year, we'll be reevaluating our budgets and income so that we can begin to best target our drive markets. We expect our longer haul market interest in availability to continue to shift exponentially. The next quarter we'll be focused on maintaining in-state visitation, expanding carefully into those drive markets and choosing our domestic markets wisely. Today we're going to share with you, information that we review on a regular basis. I'm sure that you all are doing that as well. We'll share with you how we've arrived at the information that we will be providing to the Commission. You'll also see how our creative has shifted for the in- state audience and what we have on deck for the coming months. The largest action at the next Commission meeting will be for them to review the grant applications that are coming in through the CRF. Those need to be approved and awarded in very short order and we'll submit a chair report like we did last quarter and Commissioner Mun will be in attendance if there are any questions. That brings me to the introduction of our newest committee member. We had a rather informal introduction last month, but I would like to take time to read her bio for the record. Cynthia Mun changed careers eight years ago to become a well-traveled children's book writer represented by the Bench Agency in New York. Beyond serving on the Nevada Commission on Tourism, Cynthia is currently president of the Yale Club of Nevada and ASC Director of Nevada for Yale College admissions. She is also regional advisor for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators for Nevada. Previously, she spent two decades in strategic and product P a g e 3 | 34 Nevada Commission on Tourism | Marketing Committee October 26, 2020 | Minutes marketing for MGM resorts, Tropicana Las Vegas, and also DNB. She launched Pandora.com as its senior vice-president of marketing. Cynthia served as director of product marketing and management for Gemstar TV Guide International, where she led the strategic market development and launch of the first electronic book, the precursor to the Amazon Kindle. So many products that we all enjoy. Welcome again, Cynthia. Happy to continue working with you in this capacity. Thank you. Sorry for the changing around a little bit, but those are the opening remarks, and we can move on. BRUNELLE: Thank you, M.E. And welcome, Cynthia. MUN: Thank you. KAWCHACK: I’m sorry, Carl. RIBAUDO: I'm wondering, you mentioned that you were going through the grant cycle or grant applications. I don't know if you guys produced this, but I wonder if it would be of interest to this group and we don't need to see it today, but down the line is a content analysis of what those grants are looking like now, versus maybe what they've looked like in the past. Are we seeing these grants adapt to a pandemic time? Are we seeing grants sort of continuing on and, again, just a little bit of background for us so we can understand what's going on in some of these different rural parts of the state? KAWCHACK: I don't know if Christian or Brenda want to speak to that. I know that one of the things that we did for this grant cycle was put together some offerings from media partners that I know were being offered. Madden had some things that they were preparing for other states and then they pivoted to what would be good for Nevada, and then I worked with Charter, Lonely Planet, Matador, Fahlgren helped with Adara and Travel Spike. Who else was on the list? I did things with Greenspun, Reno Gazette Journal, Las Vegas Review Journal. We put all those together. So kind of like, I explained to these media partners what we were seeing and they'd been talking to us back and forth about what we're seeing in Nevada and they put together some offerings for partners to choose from so that they could apply for those grants. Not all of them chose to go forward with them, but those were all -- I would like to do more of that in the future, I think so that they have more cohesive plans that they can get together and talk about them. Of course, this was moving very, very fast, but I think that there's something to be said for if we can do this in the future where I can kind of talk to partners, things that we want to do and not necessarily they don't all have to be co-ops either. It doesn't have to be that we're putting the money in front of it. It could be the thought behind it, right? Where we think this is a P a g e 4 | 34 Nevada Commission on Tourism | Marketing Committee October 26, 2020 | Minutes really good idea and this is why and then have that in front of them so it's unique to Nevada and what we have to offer here. RIBAUDO: My point is just to use the grant application process as another input to what's going on in Nevada tourism. KAWCHACK: Yeah. RIBAUDO: If we saw some content analysis that whenever, annually, twice a year, whatever, but I think gives this group a little bit better depth of what's going on. Also, it might allow you to shape strategy at rural levels by incentivizing different communities and destinations who apply for grants in certain ways or certain types of growth.