Transcript: Stuart Butler: [00:00:01] I genuinely fear that if we don't evolve, we could become obsolete in the next world that AI is bringing. We have to be willing to take risks. We have to be brave. It's literally a matter of whether we exist 10 years from now. It's going to be determined on how much innovation and evolution happens over the next 10 years. Adam Stoker: [00:00:21] Hello, everyone and welcome to another episode of the Destination Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Stoker. We are still here live at the South Carolina Governor's Conference on Tourism and it has been a really great event. We've gotten lots of great interviews, had great conversations. Some of the keynotes have been really fun to listen to and of course, the dining out and things like that have been really good as it should be in Hilton Head, South Carolina. So it's been a great event and I wanted to wrap up our coverage here with a good friend of mine. At least we were friends when we got here. We're still, we're trying to figure out where our relationship stands at this point. He's threatened to be our first walk-off guest who's just going to leave the interview in the middle of it. His name is Stuart Butler and he's the Chief Marketing Officer of Visit Myrtle Beach. Stuart, thanks for coming on. Stuart Butler: [00:01:06] Thank you. I'd list our relationship is complicated. Is that fair? Adam Stoker: [00:01:11] Complicated. Yeah, that's probably fair. So, Stuart, what's been your favorite part of the event so far? Stuart Butler: [00:01:16] Always the people, man, always the people at these conferences just getting to see your peers and connect and listen to what they have going on and getting ideas, sharing ideas, solving problems together. It's a big family in this industry. So it's always my favorite. Adam Stoker: [00:01:32] Awesome. Now, the last time you and I did an episode together, we did six episodes together, right? We kind of went in on our vision for owned media, for the destination marketing industry and why building audiences through owned media it is such an important way to approach it. I think we've made a lot of progress on the owned media front over the last nine months or so. I'd love to have you maybe give an update holistically on how this owned media strategy has been beneficial for Visit Myrtle Beach and some of the major projects that you've been working on over the course of that time. Stuart Butler: [00:02:08] Yeah, I mean, I still stand by everything we said and that was over a year ago now. I know that we recorded it and things have changed a lot in when we were first recording things like ChatGPT didn't really exist. It came out in November and we were recording in December. So I hadn't quite figured it out. And so I think the world has shifted, but the trend that we discussed where consumers are rejecting traditional advertising, where the large-scale media conglomerates are increasingly charging more where consumers are increasingly becoming fragmented in how they consume privacy restrictions have obviously gotten even stricter than they were. So all the trends we talked about a year ago and the hypothesis that this was going to continue, it is played out and I believe we will continue to play out. And as we discussed, we're on a path to where it's unsustainable to continue spending 80, 90% of your budget on paid media. It's just unsustainable. And so we're trying to get ahead of that and we're not the only ones. I think that's the thing that's excited me over the last year is we're seeing a lot of other folks including right here that SCPRT, we're at the South Carolina's Governor's Conference and Devin Whitmire is doing a phenomenal job with her front porch, Palmetto Porch, sorry Podcast. It's some of the best storytelling I've heard the DMO do. And she's focused on people and we said, well, we say a lot in Myrtle Beach that if we're storytellers which I believe is the primary job of a DMO you've got to focus on people, passion or purpose or combination of those are all three of those and they've leaned into a combination of those talking to people about their passions and about their purposes and it's compelling and hats off to Devin and SCPRT team. And I want to encourage more DMOs to listen to that and go do it. It's phenomenal. In terms of what we've been up to, I think when we were chatting, we had a couple of projects in the works. They're further down the line now. We had already recently launched Chef Swap Season 1, that's a cooking channel show and season 2 is I think, March 2nd. So it's coming around the corner here and we're in pre-production about to start shooting season three, it’s been phenomenally well received. It's not only did it garner a lot of eyeballs, but it created this sort of sentiment of positivity within our community that we thought may happen, but we didn't know to what degree and it was just an outpouring of support that just blew us away. So that was really, really good. Adam Stoker: [00:04:48] Yeah, want to actually add something there because I think one of the things that destinations have not yet recognized is that when you do an incredible job of storytelling, the people about whom you tell the stories become major advocates for the destination as well, right? And so, like you said, there's a sense of community pride when you can see that there's a TV show like Chef Swap at the Beach and some of these locals are becoming quasi-celebrities through this process. And then the community is proud to have those assets in the destination. And that's I don't know, we didn't really talk about the community pride aspect when we talked about the value of creating owned media. But that's a trend that I've seen over the last year is – And another great example and you and I have talked about this offline is our friend Rachel at Laguna Beach, created a combination of a podcast slash documentary called From Radical Origins about the some of the major stories in Laguna Beach and she's released those in the community theater, which I think is a brilliant way to launch that campaign and the community is showing up and they're talking about it on social media and that community pride has really shown through what I've seen destinations execute on this strategy. Stuart Butler: [00:06:05] Yeah, I think I mentioned this when we did our six-part series, but when you share people criticize when you engage, they'll defend and that's what we've seen. I think that's what Rachel's experiencing in Laguna Beach. And by the way, that's another shout-out, go listen to that Radical Origins Podcast. It's up there with the best like Palmetto Porch in terms of storytelling and they do it from a historical lens which is really unique. She's actually inspired me to start digging into our history a little bit so stay tuned on that because I think we're going to have some content coming out that'll build upon the blocks that she's laid down because the history of your destination is a part of your present. It's a part of the DNA that has created the culture, the perception, all those things. And so Myrtle Beach being only about 85 years old as a city, I've just now started digging into the early history and finding out literally, we just pointed out first-ever poet laureate the city voted in this guy who's a lifelong local and really talented guy. I've been sitting down and trying to figure out ways we can work together collaboratively to raise the perception of Myrtle Beach to tell a story of Myrtle Beach. He’s been telling me these stories that I've never heard of including one that's just so magical about the origin, the first-ever tourists in Myrtle Beach. I won't spoil it here because I think we're going to do a show about it, but it involves a beached whale and people coming from miles around to see the whale that swallowed Jonah is what they were all saying. They thought it was a sign from God. I mean, it's a phenomenal story but it was the first time anyone monetized people coming from outside to Myrtle Beach area, it was called Newtown at the time. And so we're digging into these rich stories. We have a lot of Gullah history. Geechee history and Native American history. So, we're really trying to dig into the melting pot that is Myrtle Beach, but that sort of long-term projects that we're working on. In the short term Chef Swap, like I said is done really, really well. The ROI that is phenomenal if you look at the number of folks that have watched it and posted about it and talked about it and not to mention the intangibles and the earned media. We're actually about to launch Season 1 free. It's now on GO USA TV. So if you have that out from brand USA, you can watch it. And if you have Spectrum it's on Spectrum on demand. But we're about to do something sort of radical in that we're going to release all six episodes of Season 1 on YouTube and chefswap.com. So we're getting through a couple of copyright hurdles right now, but that could be up as soon as this week. So that's what we're hoping for. So we're going to see if we can leverage some of these free distribution channels and actually build an audience. And so that's sort of an experiment we're playing around with this year. But the project I really want to talk about a little more because I mean, I'm not underselling this when I say it's the project that I'm most proud of in my entire career. It's traveling the spectrum. I think we talked about the concept a little bit in the shows, but we hadn't shot it yet and now we've shot it, we've edited it. We have six phenomenal episodes and just for the audience as a reminder, we're a sensory-friendly destination. We've done a lot of work with Champion Autism Network and some other organizations to educate our front-line workers on how to accommodate people that are neuro-diverse, specifically, a lot of folks that are on the autism spectrum. And so we've done this work for the longest time. We were actually the first destination to be certified autism-friendly. There's others that claim that and they were from the IBCCES, but we were a couple of years before them from Champion Autism Network. And so we've been working on this for a long time. We wanted to make sure the product was there before we started promoting it. Now, we feel like we're ready. And so we, we found three phenomenal families that all have very different situations with a child on the spectrum or a family member on the spectrum. And we brought them on a typical vacation with atypical moments, it was, we said we went into it saying this is not to promote Myrtle Beach. This is to bring awareness to the fact that 87% of families who have a loved one on the spectrum don't travel currently. And that broke my heart the first time I heard that stat, but we, we said, I think we can be part of the solution. So we've created this show, the six episodes are a roller coaster. I've learned so much about the families but also myself watching it. And for those of you that think I'm an emotionless, heartless sociopath, I cried like a baby in the finale. I mean, I teared up several times throughout the show. But the finale, I just, I wept in it was so moving to see these families and you sort of see the journey that they go on and you see it's the same journey every family goes on. It's just slightly different or slightly harder, right? But these families have the same challenges with relationships, with money, with parenting, they have the same worries that all parents have. What we saw was the transformative power of travel and how travel is an inalienable, right? And if you don't travel, you're somehow poorer for it. Like I believe everyone should travel and this really showed why and it will bring so much awareness to autism as a disorder, but will also encourage people without autism or people that are neurotypical to travel more I think. It's a piece of art and, and we're so excited to bring it to the world later this year. Adam Stoker: [00:11:47] I can tell why you're so proud of it because when I saw the trailer, the trailer actually brought some emotions to the surface for me and that's having not even watched the finale, which I'm sure will just destroy me. But the fact that you guys have created this around a mission and excuse me and sorry for the listeners, I'm a little under the weather. So I'm trying to keep the coughing to a minimum here. But one of the things that I thought was really amazing is in the trailer, it kind of leads with that stat that 87% of families who have someone in the family with autism or is on the spectrum, they don't travel. And there's two ways to look at that. Right? Number one is, well, that's a massive audience of people, 75 million Americans are affected and have someone in the family with autism. Well, that's a large audience that doesn't travel. And the flip side of that if you want to look at it on the other side is if you can actually make your destination more accessible, and if you can tell the story that you can have an amazing vacation, if you have a family member on the spectrum in Myrtle Beach or wherever the destination is, that's a huge audience that doesn't travel, that might come to your destination instead of another one. So again, I know that you don't make it with Myrtle Beach as the hero of the story, right? We're not saying, oh and Myrtle Beach can solve all these problems. That's not it at all. But if we actually demonstrate that Myrtle Beach is a great place for families that have someone on the spectrum in the family, it's very likely they are going to book a trip to Myrtle Beach and you show them how in this show. Stuart Butler: [00:13:22] Yeah. And I want to be clear when we started out and obviously, my job is to drive the economy, the tourism economy in Myrtle Beach, right? But I believe and this is maybe a nuanced. I haven't heard many DMOs look at it this way. I believe the primary job of a DMO is to improve the quality of life for the residents, for the local community. We're a chamber and a CVB and so that means we really have to look after the local residents in the business community which that's sort of the same, but they sort of not at the same time. And so everything we do has to be through the framework because is this beneficial to the residents to the community. We have a lot of folks with disabilities that live in our community. And so we, in part, we want to serve them here. We also believe that we're in a position of privilege with the resources we have. And certainly, this show will likely drive more awareness to Myrtle Beach, change the perception of Myrtle Beach. We’ll drive more visitation to Myrtle Beach. But we started the project saying if we can lower that number significantly, we believe we'll get our fair share. But it's more important that that number goes down than any other metric. That's the purpose of this content. Like we want to make a dent in the universe. We want to change the world and we believe that people will see that we're doing that and will see us favorably and we will become a destination of choice, but that's not the reason that we're doing it. We're doing it to make a positive impact on the world. Adam Stoker: [00:14:58] Yeah, I think that's great and it was an honor for me to go about what, a month ago, I think when you were honored for your work with this project and other projects to become Autism Certified for the destination to have you receive the award that you received a couple of weeks ago. Do you mind talking about what that award was? And I know you don't love to make yourself the center of attention, but I thought it was pretty impressive to be honored in the way that you were. Stuart Butler: [00:15:27] Yeah, I mean, I'm humbled obviously. And so I was the 2024 honoree for Champion Autism Network, which is a nonprofit organization that fights for the rights of folks on the spectrum and families and has a big focus on travel but also other resources to help families live their best life. So when Becky Lodge, who's the executive director called me up and said we'd like to give you this award, I'm not someone that loves the spotlight particularly. I said, I don't feel like I deserve it. I appreciate it, but I haven't done enough yet. She sort of took me off the ledge and said, well, this could be an opportunity to showcase the work the team is doing. And so I was happy to take it on behalf of the team and bring more awareness to these projects that we're doing, that are helping so many folks. But I think awards are a good vehicle to drive awareness and to bring more attention to a cause or to a project or a mission. And so, yeah, it was, it was a phenomenal night and it was eighties themed, which was apt, I was born in the late ‘70s, so I was sort of forged in the ‘80s. Proud Gen X. There was a lot of cool Star Wars and Pacman and Rubik's Cubes. Adam Stoker: [00:16:44] And I got to hold a lightsaber. Stuart Butler: [00:16:47] Yeah. Is that the first time you've held a lightsaber? Adam Stoker: [00:16:49] It is the first time I held a lightsaber. You know, I feel like I'd probably hurt somebody if I held one sooner than that. So it was the right time in my life. Stuart Butler: [00:16:58] This is probably true. No Children around you, you’re probably safe. Adam Stoker: [00:17:02] Now, I got to ask you one question. When I showed up, in fact, I got there a few minutes before you did. But when you walked in, the first question I had is where does one find matching Pacman outfits for a husband and wife combo? Like you and your wife did. I thought that was pretty impressive that you'd found a Pacman suit and a Pacman dress to go together. Stuart Butler: [00:17:24] Yeah, it was, I mean, online, obviously you can find any weird thing you want. And so I had originally looked to do a Rubik's Cube suit, but I couldn't find a matching dress. So then I went to the next best thing and found this Pacman suit and it was cool. You know, the funny thing is, was we showed up my wife and I in these matching outfits and another couple showed up in the exact same matching outfits. What are the chances? Yeah. Adam Stoker: [00:17:50] I was going to ask you when you bought that, did you ever imagine that there would be another couple there with the – Stuart Butler: [00:17:55] Exact same outfits? No, I mean, how would one? But it was a fun night and hats off to Chamber Autism Network, they made a lot of money for a great cause and they're doing phenomenal work, so very proud to be honored by them. But more importantly, I'm proud of the team behind me who has worked on these projects diligently. I'm sometimes the face of our organization, but I mean, we've got such an unbelievable team behind me that I couldn't do 90% of what we do without them. So this was really an honor that should really recognize them as much as anyone. Adam Stoker: [00:18:31] Well, it's one of the more meaningful projects that I've had the opportunity to come in contact with since I've started doing advertising. Really proud of the work that you're doing and hope to continue to have some involvement on some level so that we can help drive this forward because the mission of this project touches so many people. And again, if you can reduce that percentage of families that don't travel because they have someone on the spectrum in their family, that's going to be one of the most meaningful things that a destination could ever do. Stuart Butler: [00:19:00] For sure. Yeah. I mean, when you look back on your career, you're not going to worry about those early mornings or those late evenings or the meetings that you attended or the times you got into some trouble, whatever. You're going to look back at these iconic cathedrals that you've built and hopefully be proud of them. So this is certainly a cathedral that I'm proud of already and it hasn't even hit the world yet. And I'm excited to see the reaction because if people respond to it half as well as I think they will, it's going to be a phenomenon. And so we're working on distribution now, we're talking to some of the large streaming organizations or streaming publishers and that's slower than I would like. I'm ready to unleash this thing on the world, but it's the process. I think that's the thing we talked about when we're talking about branded entertainment last time is the distribution is still a challenge. How do you get your content no matter how good it is in front of people? And that's something we're still trying to figure out. We can go direct to consumer, we know that, it can you build the support and the momentum to make that viable as an alternative to a paid inclusion or something? We're actually being bold with this. We're trying to get the streaming services to option it and then to actually pay us to fund Season 2 and Season 3. So that's our objective. We've got a Plan B and A Plan C if that doesn't work out, but that we believe the content is that good. Adam Stoker: [00:20:26] Great. Well, exciting to see it come to fruition, Stuart. I want to pivot the conversation a little bit and talk about AI, we had a keynote yesterday here about AI and I think there was a lot of interesting discussions. I think in instead of getting kind of at the high level where that discussion was yesterday, I want to get a little bit more specific to tourism destinations. Relic has actually launched a product. It's a pilot program right now and we've grabbed five destinations and we're building language models for those destinations on ChatGPT. And so it started with mine where I took all the transcripts from all the episodes of my podcast. I took my book and I took other assets that we have and built a custom GPT for the Destination Marketing Podcast. It's called Destination Marketing Agent. And once we did that and went through that process, I thought who creates more content than any other organization? The DMOs have spent millions of dollars over the last 10, 15 years creating really valuable content. And if we're shifting from an era of information where somebody will do a Google search and they're okay with getting 10 links that they have to click through and do their own research on, but we're shifting from the era of information to an era of answers. But when people ask a question, they want an immediate and accurate response. I felt like that was a huge opportunity to create models for tourism destinations on ChatGPT. And then of course, you raised your hand as one of the pilot destinations that wanted to get involved. I'm curious about your thoughts that led you into that and then yeah, a little bit of your vision of how AI is going to impact destinations. Stuart Butler: [00:22:12] I mean to say it's going to be the most transformative thing that's ever happened to the travel industry is an understatement I believe. I'll call you out on one thing. What do you say? It's moving from information to answers? I don't think that's right. I think it's moving from information to conversation. And so we as an industry of the hospitality industry, not the hostility industry as some people like to position us as. Adam Stoker: [00:22:37] Yeah. Don't love that. Stuart Butler: [00:22:39] Yeah, but our DMO websites have been the least hospitable thing that has ever existed. Someone recently asked me, why do DMOs have websites. And I really had to sit and think about that for a while, other than it's the place we dump all our media to. Like it does it really provide value to the consumer? When you book a vacation are you using a DMO website? Adam Stoker: [00:23:03] Can I tell you I've tried? Stuart Butler: [00:23:04] It's hard, right? Adam Stoker: [00:23:04] It failed miserably every time. Stuart Butler: [00:23:06] Yeah. And I don't think websites are going away like some folks do, but I do think they're going to evolve into a more of a conversation and more of an intelligent experience. I mean, we've been talking about personalization for forever and I think it's become a word that is misinterpreted and misunderstood. The way I look at it is personalization is about having a 1 to 1 conversation with an individual just like if they picked up the phone or just like if they were standing at your front desk. So I think we've got to shift a little bit to provide that kind of level of experience in the digital world. I think AI is the tool to do that so that's why we're experimenting with you guys with our own custom GPT. It's the publicly available GPTs out there are great but there's a lot of information, there's too much information that isn't necessarily aligned with your objectives especially if you're a member-driven organization and you want to favor your members over non-members. But I think it gives us an opportunity to re-invent ourselves and re-invent our role in the travel planning cycle. I think it also gives us an opportunity to not just be in that awareness, consideration phase, but also to be in the booking phase in the during-stay phase in the afterglow phase so it becomes a complete circle, right? And I think we're shifting more of our focus to those the lower end or the end of that cycle because we believe that will help us with the front of that cycle. And so AI is tremendous in terms of what we're going to be able to do with the consumer. But I think right now, did you see the guy speaking yesterday asked the question, how many in this room have used ChatGPT? What percentage would you say put up their hand? Adam Stoker: [00:24:56] 85, 90? Stuart Butler: [00:24:57] Yeah. So people are dabbling. The fact there's 15, 20% that haven't including people that said they'd never heard of it. Adam Stoker: [00:25:04] That was amazing. Stuart Butler: [00:25:05] It blew my mind, right? There's not a DMO here that cannot benefit from GPT or BOD or copilot today. Right now, this second, we've instilled it in our team to use it every day. We've actually gone so far as to say we have a sort of Monday status meeting, Monday afternoons and the end of that meeting every week now we'd say we posed the question who used AI this week and how did it help you? The first couple of times we did that, it was a couple of sheep is hands. But now it's a full-on discussion in a rift session where people are like, oh, that's a really cool idea. I didn't think of that. I'm going to try that. And so we're using it and I'm using it for literally everything. It's gone from being an afterthought like here's a task. I start the task I'm like, oh wait, I could use a I to help this to now every task I start, I'm like, how can AI augment me and make me faster, smarter, more creative, more effective? We're doing everything from the simple things like idea generation or headline writing or copy editing, press release analysis, that's sort of the evolution. The most recent stuff we started doing is asking it to criticize us. So if you have a press release going out, like, ask it to interpret the press release? Like what would you take from this? If you were an editor, what would you take from this or what opportunities am I missing in this that I can add, that would make this more interesting to an editor? So getting more deliberate and more deeper into the conversation with AI is yielding phenomenal results compared to just that request and answer. Like the analogy I'm using with people is this is the most brilliant assistant you've ever had, but they're also kind of dumb, right? So think about C-3PO, right? That's what you want to think of. You don't know Star Wars because you – Adam Stoker: [00:27:06] Oh I know C-3PO. Stuart Butler: [00:27:08] But C-3PO is, speaks all these languages know all these cultures has buckets and buckets of information, but he also misunderstands things from time to time, doesn't get nuanced, doesn't get sarcasm, and misses the mark, doesn't read social cues. And so that's how we're using it. And now that it's baked into Microsoft products or copilot, there's no excuse. Everyone should be using this. If you're unsure, if I was being hypocritical, the one thing I would say about the gentleman that was talking yesterday did a good job sort of giving an overview, but I felt like his focus on the potential negative outcomes of AI maybe scared a few people in the room and maybe discourage them from playing around with it. And so I want to encourage everyone to play around with it and learn from it and not just get discouraged when the first few things you do aren't great. It's like any skill with any tool. You're terrible, the first time you use a hammer, you hit your thumb. But the more you practice the fewer times you're going to hit your thumb and so you just got to persist with it but know with confidence that you are faster, smarter, more effective at everything you do if you leverage AI as a copilot. Adam Stoker: [00:28:26] Yeah, one of the things that was interesting from that conversation yesterday like you said, it kind of seemed to focus on the negative and I feel like AI is just like anything else that if you let it happen to you as opposed to being proactive in how you approach it, then of course you lose your control over the outcome in any way. I would say at this point with what's happening with AI, no, you cannot control at a high level where AI takes us individually. It's not going to be something that you have much of a say in but how it affects your life is going to be decided on how proactive you get in learning how to use it, how to work with it. The only thing that you can guarantee by not using it is that everyone else is going to pass you by. And I want to go back to one of the things that you talked about early on is that large language models are great. But they're also, if you're a membership organization, for example, there's information out there from past members or members that don't exist anymore that when you're searching the whole internet, you can pull that in into a large language model. What's interesting about creating a closed language model is that it actually becomes smarter for your organization or about your organization than the large language model would be. And so because you're controlling the input, you're controlling what's the brain of the language model when you create a closed GPT for your destination, what you get as a result is more effective answers. And of course, you push back a little bit on, is it an era of answers or is it an era of conversation? I think that's actually a pretty valid pushback regardless if nobody is going to be comfortable with a list of 10 links to click through anymore. I think that era is somewhat over. Stuart Butler: [00:30:20] Yeah, I mean, it's, it's an evolution, right? And so people are going to find a new tool and they're going use it to produce the same outcome that the tools they've previously been using have created even though that's not the intent. But I think that's often a temporary state. So what will happen is we'll say, oh, this is a smarter search engine, right? That's how we'll start to use it and then we'll gradually begin to realize, oh, this is more than that. I envision a day where everything related to the research in transaction, an experience of travel is conversational and whether that's with your voice or whether that's with an agent that you're typing or speaking to with a visual screen, it will probably be a combination, right? But it doesn't make sense for us to just ask it to give us a list when it can curate a list and give us the pros and cons and build an itinerary and book the transaction and put it on your calendar and do everything for you. Like it's an assistant like you wouldn't, if you had a personal assistant that was sitting outside your office, right, you wouldn't say give me a list of the five best hotels that would suit my needs. You'd say, hey, I'm going to this conference, book me a hotel. That person would know over time what your preferences are. The first time they do it, they might ask, well, do you prefer four-star or five-star? Would you like to be close to a restaurant? Would you like to be like what matters to you, your criteria? So that's why I say it's a conversation because I think we're going to go through this period where individuals are going to have an AI agent that will become increasingly versatile but increasingly personalized to your specific desires and needs and ultimately will cater to those in a more precise manner over time. That's why it's conversational, not from information to answers, it's from information to conversation. Adam Stoker: [00:32:22] Great. Well, I think that was a pretty good overview. I think I would actually love to do maybe a follow-up episode sometime where we dive deeper into AI because what I noticed yesterday and that I see a lot in the AI discussion is there's a lot of high-level, here's what could happen to humanity. But again, there's not a lot of, here's how you as a destination marketer should use AI to make you more efficient. I think it would be kind of fun to have that conversation because like you mentioned, there's several new technologies and you talked about copilot just rolling out, which I think is going to be a game changer. There's also Google has a product called Notebooks where you can upload a lot of information and it'll help you make decisions and help you become more efficient as well. So I think it would be fun to maybe showcase 10 AI tools in a conversation later that people can use and get much more tactical on how they can use them and why to use one over another. I think that'd be pretty valuable for the industry. Stuart Butler: [00:33:25] Yeah. And those nuances are important because I think it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. And I certainly use three or four different tools depending on the task at hand. I've learned through trial and error that some are better than others depending on what the situation is. So, yeah, I'd be happy to do that. Although the audience I guess we did six episodes in a row and then we had to wait a year. So hopefully we don't have to wait another year before this next one. Adam Stoker: [00:33:52] No, we'll, we'll make it quick. Stuart Butler: [00:33:53] Okay. Adam Stoker: [00:33:43] Stuart, I'm going to wrap up with a question for you. You run the marketing for one of the larger destinations in the country. There's a lot of organizations out there. Why do you partner with an agency out of Provo Utah to help you with some of your activities that you're doing? Stuart Butler: [00:34:11] You know, full disclosure, I'm not going to give you a layup. Sorry. But we work with nine different agencies for different things. We work with what we believe are best in breed for different portions of our business. So what you guys brought to the table that we didn't see anywhere else was an understanding of where we want to go with branded entertainment. You have been probably the leading voice in the industry on this podcast talking about branded entertainment and why it's important. And you were one of the first resources that I stumbled across when I fell into this industry, like 2.5 years ago and started listening, thinking this guy's not that dumb, you know. Adam Stoker: [00:34:54] Gosh, I don't know if anybody's ever said anything for me. Stuart Butler: [00:35:00] And then we started chatting and realized that we agree on a lot of philosophical— We don't always agree on all the details. But I think you challenge me and I challenge you and I think I'm smarter for having known you. But I think the , the team you have are maybe one of the scrappiest agencies I've seen. Like when you're dealing with large agencies, one of the challenges and we work with large agencies and they're great and we love them. But one of the challenges is when you get to a certain scale, it's hard to be agile. And I say that coming from an agency world, right? I struggled with that too. Like, how do you adopt new technology quickly when you've got 500… 600 employees? It's hard, right? It's hard to proliferate that throughout the organization. And so what we're trying to do here with AI, what we're trying to do here with content, no one's done before. And so it's difficult to do that kind of stuff with a large agency. And so it's also risky to do that with a really small agency. Right? If someone's got two or three employees and one leaves you, you're sort of treading water. So you guys are that sweet spot around what 30 employees or so that very bright individuals, very willing. A lot of younger folks that are really smart but haven't been too seasoned in the industry – Adam Stoker: [00:36:18] They’re not jaded yet. Stuart Butler: [00:36:20] Yeah, they're not set in their ways, right? And so every challenge I throw at them is it's an opportunity for them to learn and us to learn and they do it with enthusiasm, you know. And like everything in life, it's not always perfect, but the motivation is there, the passion is there, the vision is there. And so we have had a lot of successes in the couple of years we've been working with you and I'm excited to have a lot more because I see that you see what I see, you know, if that makes sense. Adam Stoker: [00:36:53] It does to me. Stuart Butler: [00:36:55] And I think there are very few agencies in the industry that see what I see. And so we appreciate the partnership. I would encourage anyone that's interested in branded entertainment, anyone that's interested in AI, anyone that's interested in doing stuff outside of the norm of DMO marketing to give the Relic folks a call. Adam Stoker: [00:37:16] Well, I appreciate that Stuart. I think, for me, what really philosophically has been solidified for me over the last couple of years is if the plan is to copy what everyone else is doing when everyone has a different budget, all you have to do is have somebody with a larger budget than you and you're guaranteed to lose. And so for us, it's really important to try to blaze different trails, go different directions, try new things. I really appreciate the partnership, the friendship that we have. And I don't know, I'm excited to see what we can do together. Stuart Butler: [00:37:48] Yeah. Yeah, me too. And everyone that's listening out there that I understand why there's a reluctance to take risks in this industry. I fully understand why that exists. You've just got to be bold and take the leap. We as an industry are so important to the economy. It's one of the nicest, friendliest groups of people I've ever met, like everyone roots for each other and shares. I just want us to be successful. I fear, I genuinely fear that if we don't evolve, we could become obsolete in the next world, the new world order as it were that AI is bringing. We have to be willing to take risks, we have to be brave. I'm happy to talk to anyone that is struggling with this, if you want to reach out to me, I'm on LinkedIn. It's literally a matter of whether we exist 10 years from now is going to be determined on how much innovation and evolution happens over the next 10 years. Adam Stoker: [00:38:49] And the only thing that guarantees failure is continuing to do the same thing over and over and over again, regardless of market conditions, regardless of technology, regardless of the consumer. That's what guarantees that we're going to fail. Stuart Butler: [00:39:01] 100%. Adam Stoker: [00:39:02] Stuart. This has been awesome. Thanks for taking the time. Stuart Butler: [00:39:04] Thanks, Andrew. Adam Stoker: [00:39:06] We had somebody call me Andrew earlier in the event. I can't believe you remember that. If people want to learn more about you Stuart or Visit Myrtle Beach, what's the best way? Stuart Butler: [00:39:15] Yeah, go to visitmyrtlebeach.com. That's the sort of the mothership of everything we got going on. It's a DMO website. So it's not the greatest for booking your vacation, but you'll see some of the fun stuff we've got going on. We're trying to fix that though. We are working hard with our partners to make that the sort of shining example of what a DMO website can be, we're on that path, but you can also hit me up on LinkedIn, Stuart Butler on LinkedIn. It's S-T-U-A-R-T spelled the correct way. But, I love engaging with people in this community. I think it's what inspires me. It's what gives me new ideas. Constantly helps me stay creative. I think we have to have more conversations about the real challenges and not the superficial conversations. I'd love to do that more. So reach out to me if you're interested in having those kind of conversations. I'm thinking about doing something, not a podcast, but something that would be a platform for that. So stay tuned on that. But yeah, reach out to me. I love to share what we're doing with people. I love to hear what other people are doing. It keeps me excited, keeps me on my toes and so yeah, reach out. Adam Stoker: [00:40:25] great. Thanks, Stuart. I appreciate it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Stuart Butler: [00:40:28] Thank you, sir. Adam Stoker: [00:40:28] See you. [End of transcript]
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