Destination Marketing Podcast Episode 28: Tom Love
Tom love: I think for not only destinations but really for all products, and all categories, that the brand is the single most important asset you have. It's the most valuable asset a company has next to its employees. And how people perceive you how they value you is gold to companies and to destinations. Adam Stoker: 00:19 Welcome, once again, everybody to the Destination Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Stoker. We have a great show for you today and a guest that I've kind of teased you about on a few episodes in the past. It's good to finally get him on. He and I have had some scheduling issues at different times and we're finally able to make it work. Before we bring him on, I just want to remind everybody of a couple things. First of all, if you have any questions or any suggestions if you want to be a guest on the show, please email destinationmarketingpodcast@relicagency.com. We would love to get your feedback, suggestions or, like I said, have you on the show if you're interested. Also, remember reviews are very important to get us seen by more destinations. If you feel like the content is valuable, please leave us a rating or a review, we would really appreciate that. Thanks to everybody that's already done so. But without further ado, our guest today is somebody that I've been aware of for a very long time. I've looked up to for a very long time, and really excited to be able to have him on the show. It's Tom love, of Love Communications, an Ad Agency here in Salt Lake. Tom, welcome to the show. Tom love: Well, Adam, it's a pleasure I'm glad we could finally do this. You had a baby and I had the flu, so now we are on. Adam Stoker: Yeah, exactly. And they just kind of staggered with each other. But, we finally did it. Tom love: Happy to do it. I'm excited. I think you're doing a fabulous job with the show. Thank you for doing it. Adam Stoker: Well, thanks a lot. We have a little something we do every show just to break the ice and get the ball rolling. It's a Destination Marketing Show. We want to know, what is your dream destination? If you could go anywhere in the world, Tom, where would it be? Tom love: That is a fabulous question. I think number one on my list would probably be Egypt. I have never been to Egypt. Adam Stoker: Egypt? Tom love: Yeah, I am sort of a historical nut, and to go back and to be able to witness firsthand living history really sort of gets me excited. I love historical sites, and I would love to spend a month in Egypt. Adam Stoker: Over time, this is I think episode number 30 or so. And I asked this question every show, it's been kind of a staple, and I get a different answer every time. The problem is it puts another destination on my list of places I have to visit. Egypt is another one, we haven't gotten that one yet. You're right the historical aspect of it I mean, the pyramids, it sounds amazing. Tom love: 02:44 And what human beings were able to achieve. We still don't understand how they built the pyramids, what technology was able to do it over 5000 years ago. It was the smartest place in the world at the time and we still don't really understand how humanity existed and built all of the things they did. I've had two trips planned there that both got canceled primarily due to unrest and violence. It's whet my appetite even more, especially to do like a cruise up the Nile and stop in Luxor and lots of cities in between. But I hope it calms down enough for me to get there in my lifetime. That would be a dream spot. Adam Stoker: That's the main obstacle in your way right now is the danger of it. But if it calms down, you're there. Tom love: Yeah, absolutely. For sure, and I'll go alone and hire a guide. I've had a lot of friends who do it. Just don't ever travel in a group of 40 or 50. I hate that way to travel anyway. I like to explore on my own in small groups of two to six with some friends but hire a guide. I think that's one of the smartest things you can do. Adam Stoker: Yeah. Then you don't end up in a dark alley in the wrong place at the wrong time, Right? Tom love: Right. Your time is wisely used, and you see things that only locals Know about. I did that in Cuba a couple of years ago. We hired a guide for a week. This is right before Obama went and opened it up. And it was a fabulous experience. Adam Stoker: Oh man. Yeah, that sounds great. I'm just going to go down that road. Tell me a couple of things that you saw in Cuba that you thought were amazing. Tom love: 04:20 The old town, which looks like you are either walking on a movie set or you are alive in 1953 and time came to a standstill. You're walking up the main Boulevard in the old town and there are 3D signs hanging over the streets. It looks like you're walking in 1953. It's dilapidated, it's run down. Some of the building storefronts have been repainted and redone. And there are, 1955 Chevy's driving up and down the street. It honestly feels like you have just gone back in time and it comes alive. Adam Stoker: And for a history buff, that's a great experience. Tom love: Fabulous experience. People were incredibly generous and friendly. What we learned there is you would sit down at dinner or at the bar at the end of the day and have a beer and start talking about politics at the time, President Obama was trying to open up Cuba and airlines were rushing to establish flights. And we had opened the embassy six months earlier and we were establishing relations, and everybody was sort of really excited. But if you talked about Cuban leadership or political relationship with the US, people would cower and shush you and go, “shh,”. And then the phrase down there is they said, "Cuba has a million people and 6 million eyes." And everybody's watching so you couldn't talk politics or relations, or trade or anything like that out in public. Really curious. I didn't even have that experience in China. When I went on a trade mission to China. It was you could talk sort of openly about but not in Cuba. It's kind of interesting. Adam Stoker: Yeah, that is interesting. A big mouth like me would struggle any time there's something you can't talk about. Tom love: Oh, yeah, boy, the locals would just cower and look around and go like "What are you doing stop, no, shh, no we don't talk about that. We don't talk about Castro don't, no, no." Adam Stoker: Probably makes you appreciate the freedom of speech a little bit more when you're in a place like that? Tom love: Of course it does. Being willing to talk about anything without fear of retribution or reprisal, of course. Adam Stoker: Yeah, well, interesting stuff. Tell me is Cuba then the favorite place you've ever been? Or are there other places that you've liked a little bit better? Tom love: No, one of the most fascinating experiences I've ever had, it was one of my favorite places, which is Ireland. And I've been to Ireland a few times. But this last trip about four years ago, we ventured North and went and stayed in Belfast for four or five days. That is one of the most fascinating cities I have ever been to on the planet. Adam Stoker: Really? Tom love: 07:13 Yeah. It's got a three-mile long peace wall, with Catholics on one side and Protestants on the other. There are still tensions there today. There aren't shootings, there isn't the violence in Belfast today that there was in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, with the troubles. But boy, there sure is tensions and to see these neighborhoods of orange Protestants, they're loyal to the UK, versus the Irish Catholics that are loyal to all of Ireland and want a united Ireland. It's so alive in this city, and it was going through a lot of struggles. It used to be the shipbuilding capital of the world. It’s where the Titanic was built and the Lusitania and in the ‘20s, ‘30s, ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s it was the shipbuilding capital of the world, and then they lost it. They sort of lost that business as we moved from ships to airlines and rails, but mostly the airlines. Their economy fell apart. There's these real sort of middle class struggles to find a living and find an identity. But the battles between folks who identify as loyalists to the UK, versus loyalists to a United Ireland. And it's one of the prettiest cities, they have murals on every house and every building. The art installations in Belfast are overwhelming. It's the home to my favorite musician Van Morrison. We went to see Van live in Belfast, it's so alive and so vibrant. That's one of my favorite cities ever. Adam Stoker: I can tell it sounds amazing. Boy, you've got a unique talent, I can already tell, of visiting places that fit in your wheelhouse. Something tells me before you plan a trip, there's a lot of research that goes into it. Tom love: 09:03 Oh, sure. Absolutely. Yeah you don't just show up and go, "Okay, where are we? What are we doing today?" No, I take a binder of we've got tours on this day, we've got museums here. We visited the jail in Dublin, where the Easter Rising happened in 1919 and the fight for independence for Ireland. I plan out an activity, a visit something every day. Then have some free time to sort of explore, feel the personality and the burn of a city, and sort of what's happening, always on foot. But then I also had a guide and a black cab for all of Northern Ireland. We visited the sets of “Game of Thrones”, at the time, that my son really wanted to see, and I wasn't watching the show at that point, but since have. But boy! Belfast is a living museum of recent troubles. This is the reason Brexit can't get done today. This is the one obstacle that is preventing the UK from leaving the European Union is discussing the Northern Ireland border. Between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. They eliminated that hard border and those checks for customs and things, so it feels like a United Ireland. We went back and forth between Ireland and Northern Ireland seamlessly. Brexit has thrown that all into chaos and no one can agree. The European Union says, "No, we're going to put that border back up you're not part of the Union anymore, we going to have to put that border back up." And everyone in Ireland is freaking out about it because they don't want that border ban. That's the single most important argument that's preventing a successful Brexit exit. Adam Stoker: Wow, I tell you what, I just learned more about Brexit than I have in all the news articles and everything that I've seen out there, man. I'm thinking, Tom next year, I need you to plan a trip and I'm just going to tag along. I'm just going to follow you around and learn everything there is to know about the destination, and the best things to do and the history. It sounds amazing, are you in? Tom love: Absolutely. I'll tell you what it's going to be. It's going to be far Eastern Europe starting in Istanbul, and then going to Budapest, and then a 10-day cruise up the Danube River, stopping in Vienna, and then taking a train to Prague. It will take about three and a half weeks. But that's what's happening in May or September of 2020. That's the next trip on the agenda. Adam Stoker: Okay, I'll check with the boss. We got a baby that can't leave home, but I'll see if she'll let me go for three and a half weeks. If she's in I'm in. Tom love: You're more than welcome. Adam Stoker: Awesome. Well, Tom, I could tell you're passionate about travel and this is a show for destination marketers. You're the perfect guest to have on. I want you tell everybody a little bit about your background and what you do. Then I'll tell everybody how I've gotten to know who you are over the years, and our paths have crossed, and a little bit about the work you've done in the industry. Let's start with who you are and how you ended up as CEO of Love Communication. Tom love: 12:36 Sure. Okay. Very happy to do that. As a young person I was in, well I entered my father's agency, which was Harrison Love Advertising, when I was in high school and college. He was a madman kind of guy. He was a '50s, '60s, '70s. He had worked at the agency world in New York and then came back here to raise his family in early 1950s. Harrison Love was sort of the premier firm in the Intermountain area, working with all the big brands along with a couple of other, Evans Advertising and Harrison Love and some of those great names of great people. That was really the Mad Men era. I was really exposed to advertising through my father's successful firm at that time, but after graduating from college, I went into media and worked on the media side and had a very successful career in television to both ABC4 and KU TV2 and worked there for about 15 years. I worked into the number two position at Channel Four TV, general sales manager, managing $44 million in sales. There are three key jobs at a TV station. There's the general manager, the news director and the sales director. The news director is responsible for putting out the product, and a sales director is responsible for generating as much money for the station as possible. It was a really fun time in the late '80s, '90s. It wasn't quite the pinnacle of the golden years of TV, the '70s and the '80s. But it was a really, really fun time. Television stations made a lot of money in those days. Then we watched the advent of cable explode. I went to become the director of the first cable internet company here in 1991, when CNN became world famous with the Iraqi war, the Gulf War, and I watched that. 14:26 Then in 1999, I was 39 years old. I had other agencies in Salt Lake that were my clients. I didn't think a couple of them did the very best job and I just thought I can do better than these guys. I don't want to work for somebody else anymore. I want to start my own firm. I talked two other people into doing it with me, an art director and a writer from Harrison Love, one of whom was my brother. I was the business guy; I would go out and pitch the business and then these guys have produced the product. We started and we started that 20-years ago. 20-years ago last August and started with the three of us. We made a profit about the third month and we've been making profits ever since. We work really hard, we're incredibly honest. We're transparent to our clientele. Then we're a 44 person, 55 million in capitalized billings firm headquartered in Salt Lake City, but with clients throughout the Intermountain West and media clients across the country. It's been a very good run. We've been very fortunate, very lucky. We've had a lot of really great supportive clients. We've carved out a really good niche in tourism in the last 10 years or so. That's sort of the story of where we got here. Adam Stoker: 15:45 Great. Thank you for that. I want to talk about how you carved out that niche for tourism. The way I was originally exposed to you is I started out in media myself. While I was still in school, actually I worked at FM 100. And became familiar with Love Communications when I was selling radio at FM 100. That was in 2007 or eight gosh, I should know that off the top of my head. I was doing that first, and you guys were well known and respected agency at that time. Then over the years I remember when I was at Thomas Arts, I worked at Thomas Arts for a little while after school, and I remember you won, I believe it was, advertising Man of the Year in Utah. Is that right? What year was that? Tom love: Well, there are two awards. There's the Ad Professional of the Year, which I won in 2001 and then there's the Silver Medal Award, which is a lifetime of achievement in advertising industry. That's given more to senior people. Dave Thomas won it; he was a winner. I love Dave, I have all the respect in the world for Dave. He's been a friend for 40 years. I won Ad Professional of the year in early 2000s. And then the silver medal in 2015. Adam Stoker: In 2015 Okay, yeah, that's more recent than I thought it was. But, in 2015 I remember when you won that, and you mentioned Dave. I owe way too high of a percentage of where I'm at in my career to the first year and a half of it, that I had at Thomas arts where I really learned the ropes of advertising and got an opportunity. They hired me in 2009. When it was probably the worst time in the history of advertising to graduate in advertising. They gave me a $10 an hour internship there and I was able to kind of break in and get to know the industry. What a great business he's built and a great mentor he's been to a lot of people. Tom love: 17:45 He's fabulous. Over the years, absolutely no question about it. And I'm glad one, that he paid his interns because we totally believe in that. You always pay interns. I don't trust agencies that have interns work for free. No good. Do you know how Dave got his start in the business? Adam Stoker: Yeah, he was a junior high band teacher, right? Tom love: He wrote jingles. He played a guitar and would write jingles for clients. That's how he got his start. He is fabulous. He's had multiple successful runs. But anyway, that’s Dave. Adam Stoker: Yeah, a little bit of a tangent, but common ground there for both of us. You know, several years ago I actually heard you speak at, I believe it was a breakout session at the Utah tourism conference. You talked about branding. I've always had my opinions on branding. But it's always been difficult for me to articulate it. You took all these different components of branding that were in my head, and you simplified it for me, and made it really easy. You said, and I'll never forget, you said, "The simple definition of a brand is the sum of all the touch points the brand or organization has with the outside world." And really, when you boil it down to that, it's very simple. Tell me a little bit about, expand on that for me and for our listeners, about your philosophy on branding and why for destinations, branding is so critical. Tom love: 19:07 Okay, well, I think for, not only destinations, but really for all products, all categories, that the brand is the single most important asset you have. It's the most valuable asset a company has next to its employees, and how people perceive you, how they value you is gold, to companies and to destinations. It's what we seek to aspire, it's why we want to go there. It's how we want to visit; it's why we want to own that product. We're willing to go further, spend more to get a brand that we want and desire. That's why it's important to build a brand. Brand is the perception of value that consumers have in their mind. That perception of value is all determined by every single touch point that a consumer can have with your brand. If we're talking about the state of Utah in the Utah Office of Tourism, there are millions of different possible touch points that folks can have. The top of that funnel, it's the perception of the state. It's two things. It's the messages that we pay to put out there, whether it's for skiing, or it's for Southern Utah three season summer, Red Rock marketing. Because there are two main strategies we have for the state. It's summer and Southern Utah or it's Winter and skiing. All the paid messages that we put out there. Whether it's TV, pre roll video, banner ads, billboards, radio ad, interactive boards. We had a campaign one year in Los Angeles where we had nothing but digital billboards in LA that would give the weather forecasts that said, "Your 24 inches of rain yesterday is our two feet of powder today. 19 flights leaving daily." Adam Stoker: That's great. Tom love: 20:58 The first touch point is obviously, what are the messages? What are we doing? How are we inspiring people? The other touch points are the things you can't control, news media, things that happen, our stance on public lands, the Bears Ears National Monument controversy, accidents or tragedies or people who fall off Angel's landing. And then there's also good publicity too, like the 2002 Winter Olympics did a huge amount for the state of Utah. That is really hard to measure in the eyes of the world. There are those two main strategies of touch points that you can pay and control and then those touch points that you can't control, and you're sort of at mercy to. Then everything in between. The other touch points are the ones when people come here. You experience this when you go visit a place, and I experience when I go visit a place, or when folks come here. The thing that makes a destination magical are the people and how they treat you. I will totally stand by that on everything. The vistas can be beautiful, the food can be amazing. The adventure can be exhilarating. But if people are rude or unfriendly nothing can overcome that. If people are friendly and welcoming, everything else will be rosy or happier. Adam Stoker: You know, Tom, I've talked about it too many times on the show, but my wife and I, in 2015, went to Fiji and it rained the whole time. But the thing that made it our favorite trip ever was the relationships that we built with the people. Maybe I shouldn't go too deep on the story, but we went deep-sea fishing. And one of the things that they did is you would catch the fish and then they would take it they cook it for you right there at the resort. We went deep sea fishing with the people that worked at the resort, they were on the boat with us. We caught two big fish, more meat than we could ever eat. On the way back, I asked the guy, I said, "Okay, well, am I allowed to give you the fish?" And he said, "Well, no, we're not allowed to do that." I ended up convincing him to take the fish because I can't eat this fish. There's no reason for us to take it to the resort. I paid for the deep-sea fishing session, there's no reason they should be able to take the fish and use it. Anyway, I talked him into it. For the rest of the trip, the whole staff immediately knew that we had done that and so they, I can't remember the word that they kept calling me, but it was hilarious. Then they kept looking at me and they'd hold up two fingers and say, "One fish." Tom love: That’s awesome. Adam Stoker: Anyway, it was this inside joke the whole rest of the trip. The friendship that we built with those people, I mean, that's probably 60-70 percent of the experiences just the feeling you have with the interactions you have within the destination. Tom love: 24:04 Exactly right. I think that's something that is one of the next evolutions in destination marketing. It's being able, and I talk about this with all of our clients in-state and out-of-state. But I want locals to understand what the strategy, I want Moab locals to understand what the Moab strategy is. I want Zion National Park visitors to understand what the Zion Forever project is. I want folks across the state of Utah when we launched the Mighty 5 campaign for the state of Utah in 2015. We weren't allowed by state statute to message anybody in the state of Utah. So, folks would be coming from outside the state and start talking about the Mighty 5, and people down in Bryce didn’t know what it was. I think one of the first things that you really have to do is engage your local community because they are the brand ambassadors of that community to the outside world. Adam Stoker: Your stakeholders’ control so many of the touch points that you would like to control, but it's those one-to-one interactions, like you say. That stakeholder education is so critical. I think you're absolutely right. As far as it being the next step, more and more destinations have started to do a better job of educating their stakeholders. You know, for example, citizens don't understand in a lot of cases the tax implications of tourism and how much money it saves every individual family in the state. Tom love: There's no question, it's almost $1500 dollars per family of a lighter tax burden that tourism brings to the state of Utah, $1.3 billion in tax revenue. My good friend Jim Winder, former Salt Lake County Sheriff here, who went down to become the Moab chief of police and clean things up there for two years, used to say "I want to put on a thermometer on the side of every police car and fill it up to 81% and say, “This is the percentage of your police force paid for by visitors taxes.” Residents don't know that, they don't know the whole business. It's incumbent upon us, as destination marketers to educate and inform to local citizens. I really think that's an important next wave of destination marketing is making sure those touch points, those people that are on the ground, the shop owners, the restaurant owners, folks who work in the hotel, people you sit next to at a restaurant, locals, guides who all have a deeper better appreciation for what tourism and destination marketing does for the community. Because in the absence of that, they tend to think you know, tourism has a huge negative impact and all of you go home, and nobody has the proper understanding of reduction in tourism marketing or how it would harm their community. Adam Stoker: 26:51 Oh, I totally agree. I'm glad you bring that up. And I hope our listeners are paying attention on this one. There's, I don't want to call it a myth, but there's this comment about over-tourism. It’s because the farther we get from that economic downturn that we had that caused such a dip in tourism. The farther we get from it; the less people remember how much we needed it back then. The answer is not necessarily less tourism in a lot of these cases, which a lot of the citizens believe. It's actually how do we provide different experiences and educate? I think a perfect example is Zion National Park and Arches National Park. I think in Utah, those are two of the more controversial over-tourism places here. Tom love: Correct. Adam Stoker: I feel like in those areas, instead of "Hey, don't come." It's "Hey, when you're here, here are the 10 other amazing places that you're not going to be shoulder-to-shoulder when you're here.” Like Zion National Park, is millions of acres, maybe not millions, maybe it's thousands of acres of land, but only about six percent of it is where you’re shoulder-to-shoulder and the rest of it is wide open. How do we educate people that are coming to the destination on the cool places to go, and stop complaining about the over-tourism, which I think is closer to a myth than not? Because it's really a diverting traffic issue. Tom love: 28:17 Totally agree. Zion National Park is 167,000 acres. It has had 4.7 million visitors this year. Yellowstone is like 200,000 square miles and has 4.3 million visitors. So, we're jamming, we're the fourth busiest National Park in the country, through a single Canyon. That's the pressure on Zion. In Arches, Kate Cannon the Arches Park superintendent two weeks ago in Moab said and I quote, "We don't have too many visitors to Arches. We have too many visitors to Arches between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Our problem isn't exactly, as you said Adam, our problem isn't that we have too many visitors. The problem is we have too many visitors all at the same time. Getting people to understand, and this is an initiative we're working on with our client and all that. Which is, we're communicating out to people who have booked a trip but haven't come yet, to tell them heads up, "Here's how to do Moab like a local. Get to the park before nine, go to the park at four. Or by the way, here are the 10 other areas outside the park boundaries that are almost equally stunning. That will give you a fabulous experience." Adam Stoker: So great. Tom love: I couldn't agree with you more. Adam Stoker: Awesome. Tom love: This explanation of over-tourism to locals is one real strategy and then communicating the other greater parts. Zion National Park is hard at work right now, on an East Zion entrance. Park Service made a presentation on this. It's $12 million new visitor center on the East side, over on the Kanab side, near Highway 89. That's going to be this 3000-acre bison pasture, visitor center, educational interactive stuff. And open up 6000 other acres to bike riding, hiking, trail biking, off road vehicles, et cetera, et cetera. That allow you to have a Zions experience without necessarily going inside the park. You're exactly right. Getting people to other greater areas is our next big opportunity. Adam Stoker: Great. That's great advice. Tom, I actually have made a mistake and didn't ask you to tell us who some of your major tourism clients are so people can have it as a frame of reference. I know you mentioned Moab. I know you work with the state of Utah. Who else are you guys working with on the tourism side? Tom love: 30:57 Visit Salt Lake was our real first client in the tourism space and that led to the opportunities with Utah Office of Tourism, but we've worked with Scott Beck, who just recently left, with Visit Salt Lake. And marketing the four ski resorts in the canyons as Ski City, USA. Then the Convention Visitors Bureau the rest of the year. This is Salt Lake, Snowbird is a client, Kanab is client, a fabulous client. Kane county in the town of Kanab. They happen to have one of the most expensive resort hotels in the world. Adam Stoker: Oh, Amangiri. Tom love: Amangiri, Yes, exactly right. This is where the Brad Pitt's of the world go to hide from people and spend $1,800 dollars a night. So, it kicks off a couple million dollars a year in TRT. The county, as you know, has to spend on marketing and promotion of the county, so Kanab is a fabulous town they have 5 million people go through highway 89 on that town to visit the Grand Canyon or Zion or Bryce. It's the slot canyoneering capital of the world. It's so fun to go in some of our rural Utah towns and hear the languages and meet people from all over the globe. The treasures we have in Southern Utah are just unbelievable, unbelievable. Adam Stoker: Totally agree. Well, it's fun to really see the impact of tourism on some of those small communities. Like you said, we work with several other destinations here in Utah- Tom love: Yeah, I know you do. You do a great job. Adam Stoker: Thank you. Yeah, it's incredible to see what they're able to do, in some cases you've got all this traffic coming in and a very small population. What they're able to accomplish is really fun in the tourism space. I think a lot of our listeners worldwide, actually we've got a couple of listeners in New Zealand that reached out to us over the last few weeks. I think the things that we learned here in Utah with some of these communities that you serve and that we serve, these principles apply to any destination. It's not just a Utah situation. There's misconceptions of over-tourism in probably every state of the union depending on the attraction. Tom love: Sure. Adam Stoker: Understanding that this is an education thing. That all of the different touch points that a destination has with the outside world are critical to manage. Like if you're doing a great job with your advertising campaign, but all your hotel employees in the county are mean to everybody that comes. Tom love: You're absolutely right. Adam Stoker: It's not enough. So, let's talk evaluation- Tom love: It kills the value. I want to say, “Kia Ora to our friends in New Zealand,” because I spent two and a half weeks in New Zealand two years ago and went from Auckland at the top down to Queenstown at the bottom- Adam Stoker: Of course you did. Tom love: 33:53 It is absolutely, boy, those guys do tourism right. I mean, these are two islands of 4 million people; 1.7 of them are in Auckland. Then the rest of the country is just, we drove it. Adam Stoker: Oh! Really. Tom love: Yeah, we drove the whole thing, or boat and on lakes. You know there are no spiders in New Zealand. There are no snakes in New Zealand. They have done such a job of good stewardship, of protecting the natural resources, especially on the Southern island of New Zealand. The rest of the world and lots of America could learn from what they do, it's spectacular. They have the purest clear water lake in, I think, Queenstown, that it looks like, and they talk about it when you're there, that man only discovered it in 1860 and it looks like that today. Preserved it, it looks like you are the first human being to ever see this lake. It is crystal clear, it's 99.9% pure. It's just jaw dropping in its beauty. Anyway, my hats off to your listeners in New Zealand because it's a fabulous experience. Adam Stoker: Yeah, you know New Zealand has been on my bucket list, now at the very top of my bucket list, for years and you only make it sound more appealing. Definitely a high priority for me to make my way out there. That sounds like an amazing experience. Tom love: 35:16 And when you go, make sure you go to a town called Christchurch that suffered from severe earthquakes about seven years ago, if you'll remember that, it's happened to them twice. They really got in and Christchurch also had the mosque shooting last year. Christchurch was a city in rubble, I mean Adam, you go to it and the main part of town it's still in rubble and it's just bricks laying in a pile and a half of Church still sitting there. It's not like America where they go in and they'll plow down a couple of blocks and new structures come up immediately. Each individual entity is responsible for rebuilding themselves and they take their time. But what did pop up in Christchurch that was so amazing was art. Human art installations and displays and they had a display called “White Chairs”. They have 181 white chairs sitting in a park that represent every person who died in an earthquake. And it just takes your breath away. In Christchurch, they haven't rebuilt all of Christchurch, but the first thing they did was build art. Beautiful, interactive art displays always. It was one of the most, I put that is one of my top five cities in the country or the world that I’ve ever been to. Adam Stoker: Okay, Christchurch, it's on the list. Tom love: There you go. Adam Stoker: Absolutely. Thank you, man. Tom, I got bad news for you. You're going to get a lot of emails from me when I'm considering places to travel. Tom love: Happy, awesome. Great. Adam Stoker: Great. Hey, let's switch gears a little bit. Let's talk about evaluating your touch points. If I'm a destination, now let's get tactical. I'm a destination I know I've got all these touch points. Where do I start in evaluating and prioritize what to sell for first? Tom love: What a great question. I think you do the block and tackling. You make a list, and you live it like a visitor. You go through and you do that. From the point of entry, whether it's via the airport or via the road or via some other mode of transportation, what do visitors see? How do they experience? What are their first exposures? Where do they go? How do they do it? What's the reception? How do they get to the hotel? What are the roads like? What's the traffic like? Are Uber's available? How do we handle transportation? What's the reception? How are the people at those touch points? And then what do you do when you get out on the trail or the road or the museum or the street? Literally, I think, you make a list of all those touch points. You incorporate all of these people into your planning and your communication. Whether it's the restaurant owners, or the hoteliers, or guides if you're an outdoor rec spot, or you know, association of museums, you think about what your touch points would be in Salt Lake City, versus Moab and they're completely different. But I think you have to go do it. It reminds me of a lesson I learned early on from Earl Holding, Little America and Sinclair, who was known to be the most detail-oriented owner. Folks had a hard time working for him because he was so focused. He would inspect rooms and go check the length of the curtains. He was such a detailed guy. He used to say, "You know what, in our business, you got to serve hot food, hot and cold food, cold. And it's amazing how many people screw it up." Adam Stoker: It's the basics. Tom love: 38:35 It's the basics. It's the blocking and tackling. If you can have an impact on that experience of how people are treated, when they're in your care, that's what you do when you’re a destination marketing organization and get everybody on your team. And living the brand. You know, what's the brand of Kanab? It's Magically Unspoiled. What's the brand of Salt Lake versus the brand of Ogden? Ogden has a fabulous marketing strategy of Notoriously Independent. They use the word notorious. Now this is a kind of curious for a destination marketing organization. Say we're notorious, we're a little rebel, we're a little out there. We are a notoriously Western, we're notoriously adventurous, we're notoriously interesting, and it’s part of their brand. Well, you want everybody who lives works and plays in Ogden to understand that. It's okay to be a little notorious. It's okay to be a little out there. It's okay to be a little Western. The most successful firms, companies, DMOs that do that, have a clear brand that they can communicate to the outside world and to their inside world. The more that locals can live that brand, because they're brand ambassadors, the better off you’ll be. Adam Stoker: Yeah, one of the things I love that you said there, Tom, is if you're a destination marketer, I think one of the cliché things that people say is, “Well put yourself in the shoes of the visitor.” It's like, okay, well, yeah, I can sit here and think what would it be like to be the visitor. No. Arrive at the airport. Tom love: Go do it. Adam Stoker: Do exactly what a visitor would do. Take the Uber, go to the hotel, stay at the hotel, don't tell anyone who you are. Experience it exactly as a visitor would. And I tell you, Tom, I totally agree with you that you will know very quickly which touch points are a problem once you experience it as a visitor. Tom love: Exactly, oh yeah. Absolutely. You probably suspected but you got to go. You got to go live it. You got to go do it. And your staff, secret shop your own community. No question. Adam Stoker: 40:45 Absolutely. Tom, I tell you, obviously, I was really excited to have you on today. I think I could sit here and talk to you for hours about marketing, and destination marketing specifically, but I think some of our listeners have gotten used to our 30 to 40 minutes episodes. I do want to ask you though, especially since you've been in the industry for a long time, you obviously know what you're doing with advertising and marketing. I'd love to have you just share, if there's anything we haven't asked you, that you feel like destination marketers need to know. I'd love to have you share that with our listeners. Tom love: Boy, what destination marketers need to know. I'd say be true to your brand. Really understand who you are and embrace it and own it. Don't ever try to be something that is not aspirational branding, this is be true to yourself. Adam Stoker: Authenticity. Tom love: Authenticity. Don't be afraid of it. Don't be embarrassed by it. I'm going to point to Ogden and Kanab as two examples. Kanab, they used to say, "Well, we don't have any hotels. We don't have places to stay. We don't have a convention center. We're not Moab, we don't have all the signs. We don't have all these facilities." I said, “Great! That's a feature, not a problem.” Kanab is Magically Unspoiled. It's the true, it’s the only experience in the authentic American West where it's still unspoiled. So, come now while you can, before 7 billion other people do. That's the strategy. We took what they considered was a problem. Are you kidding me? You are sitting on a gold mine. Take what's true and embrace it and turn it on its head. That's exactly what Ogden has done by becoming Notoriously Independent. They love to say in Ogden "They were rich at the right time, and poor at the right time." They were a railroad town built from the 1880s to the 1930s. They were really rich and flush. They had nine railroads coming into Ogden at one point in time. We think of it now as a railroad town and a little bit run down and they suck. But they were really rich between 1880 and 1930. Then we stopped traveling by train and started traveling by airline. So, all of the train business went away and downtown fell into total disrepair. In the '50s, '60s and '70s they were too poor to demolish everything and rebuild. It's all preserved now, and refurbished. They have this amazing historic downtown, that they thankfully, never destroyed. Any other time, if they'd been able to do it would have torn it all down and rebuild it. Then they would have had no character, so what do they do? They take that old West character and they run with it and embrace it. That's what any DMO does. What might look as our problem or our failure might really be our strength. Adam Stoker: Yeah. Be true to who you are and lean into what makes you unique. Tom love: Very, well said. Adam Stoker: 43:51 Well, Tom, this has been wonderful, for me especially, having watched you as a mentor from a distance over the years. I really appreciate the opportunity to have you on the show and chat with you here for a while. I think the wealth of knowledge that you've shared with our listeners has been extremely beneficial. One of my favorite episodes so far. Thank you so much. Tom love: Well, Adam, you're too kind. I admire what you do and how you built your agency. Thank you for doing this podcast. It's my pleasure, my honor, and I thank you. Adam Stoker: Great. Well, everybody, this has been another episode of the Destination Marketing Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Reminder leave us a review. Also join the Destination Marketers LinkedIn group, where we are posting many things from the show. But also, we've got a lot of other people in the channel that are posting tips, tricks, experiences, case studies, and it's really getting fun in there. If you haven't joined, go in request we’ll approve you and get you in there. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks, everybody.
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