Is Your DMO Chasing Relevance When It Should Be Fighting for Significance?

In this episode of Destination Discourse, Stuart Butler and Adam Stoker recap Adam's latest CMO Jam - a live, candid roundtable with six DMO marketing leaders - and dig into the ideas that stuck.

The biggest one: panelist Christian Mingle pushed back on the word "relevance," calling it table stakes - do people know we exist? He argued DMOs should chase significance instead: do we actually move the needle for our destination? The framing reshaped the rest of the discussion.

They also cover the agency model's unraveling. Multiple CMO Jam panelists said they'd fired their agency of record in favor of specialists hired for specific problems, as in-house teams get more capable with AI. Adam argues agencies must shift from selling execution to selling strategy and partnership, and predicts real disruption over the next three years.

The conversation closes on budget: money is moving from paid media into content, but not owned content. Stuart makes the case for incentivizing residents and locals to create authentic destination content instead of DMOs producing and owning it themselves - trading control for reach and distribution.

Adam also announces DMO Jam, a new recurring mastermind cohort for destination marketers, expanding on the CMO Jam format.

Bottom Line: Relevance just means people know you exist. Significance means you can prove impact - and that's the bar DMOs, and their agencies, now have to clear.