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HomeMy WebLinkAbout02-10-2010 PCC MinutesPromotional Coordinating Committee Minutes Wednesday, February 10, 2010 5:30 pm City Hall Council Hearing Room 990 Palm Street CALL TO ORDER: Chair Terry Conner 5:30 pm PRESENT: Babb, Davis, J. Conner, Fidler, STAFF PRESENT: Brigitte Elke, Principal Administrative Analyst PUBLIC COMMENT There was no public comment. City Manager Katie Lichtig introduced herself to the Committee. CONSENT AGENDA ACTION: Moved by Babb/Fidler to approve the consent agenda as presented. Motion carried 5:0 PRESENTATIONS 1. SUNSET – SAVOR THE CENTRAL COAST Josh Heiser, event organizer for “Savor the Central Coast”, gave an event update reiterating that the City was the first sponsor of the event. At this point they have raised $200,000 in cash sponsorships. Josh went over the current event schedule which includes the two events in the City of San Luis Obispo. He announced that they are about to sign Tyler Florence as the celebrity chef and Riedle glasses as the exclusive wine glass provider for the entire event. Volvo has signed as the first national sponsor and Visa might follow. A web holding page is up for pre-registration and Sunset will be sending eblasts to 350,000 subscribers. On February 26, 2010 the event committee will hold a ground breaking event at Santa Margarita Ranch to which the committee members are invited. Staff will coordinate the invitations to the committee members. The committee members received copies of the current promotional material. 2. CONTRACT UPDATES ShopSLO/DineSLO Katy McGrath from Verdin Marketing went over the past six months of the campaign. The objective of the campaign was to bring county residents to shop and dine in San Luis Obispo. The dine component was new and a new logo was developed. The sites were launched in November. The sites were cross-promoted and ShopSLO is responsible for 22% of traffic to DineSLO. 44% of the traffic to the sites came from www.sincerelycalifornia.com. Most popular pages were the home page, member login, neighborhoods, and search. Facebook shows 44 friends for ShopSLO and 28 fans for DineSLO. Twitter has 29 followers for ShopSLO and 44 followers for DineSLO. The agency arranged for two speaking engagements and PR releases were picked up from the November release date all the way into January. The gift cards for the 4th quarter contest were all distributed and 59% went to people from outside the City. Katy handed out a summary with customer anecdotes. One of the upcoming changes to the sites will be the addition of an event section incorporating the GIA grant recipients’ events. For the next six months, only $5,600 remain in the budget. This was anticipated since the big push was planned for the 4th quarter. The agency wanted to make sure that the remaining budget is used for online marketing in order to keep the momentum going. Katy therefore suggested minimizing account management expenditures and proposed that she attend only two more meetings until the end of the fiscal year. The committee was amenable to this change. Marilyn Fidler commented that she saw the window clings in many establishments and gathered that the merchants were very pleased with the campaign. PR / Events Promotion / Visitors Center and Website Dave Garth introduced Grace Allen and Whitney Diaz to the committee and began the contract overview by reiterating the Chamber’s contractual relationship with the City as it relates to tourism. Lindsey Miller then gave an overview of the last six months on the various contractual obligations the Chamber currently executes for the City. She presented various PR pieces and the publications she is currently working with. Her focus for PR is currently on “lifestyle”. MyMediaInfo, which is paid for by the City is used for a lot of the information needed to make contact. Lindsey is planning visits to all SLO Vintners in collaboration with the TBID’s agency to create a cohesive marketing message for the SLO wine country. All 2009-10 GIA recipients were contacted however, not all of them took advantage of the promotional support through the events promotion contract. Lindsey is meeting with Cal Poly Open House in preparation of the upcoming event. The committee wanted to make sure that Lindsey will be introduced to the receiving organizations at the meeting scheduled in May/June. Lindsey attended three events with the City tourism booth and is constantly looking for more opportunities such as Open House and Train Day in Los Angeles. Lindsey presented the changes to the Visitors’ Center which include the 65” TV and promotional high definition video paid for by the City. The wine map and several pictures inherited from Taste and a Farmers Market display are further enhancements to the center. She invited the committee members to a reception on March 4th, 4:30 to 5:30 pm. Whitney Diaz gave an overview of the website efforts. She is now responsible to keep the website updated. She had met with a search engine optimization specialist to gain more traction with VisitSLO.com in addition to continuously improving the web content. BUSINESS ITEMS 1. GRANTS-IN-AID PROCESS REVIEW Terry Conner gave a report on the GIA subcommittee meeting in January and the minor changes made to the application. He also commented on the mandatory pre-application meeting held at 5 pm, just before the PCC meeting. 2. EVENT IDEAS Staff gave an overview on an inaugural GranFondo bike ride scheduled for October 23, 2010 in collaboration with Alpha, Inc. and the efforts to add a marathon race to the current City to Sea Half Marathon for 2011. Dusty Davis asked staff to look into Santa Barbara’s Grand Prix which encourages participation in several events to win a grand prix at the end of the event period. PCC LIAISON REPORTS Staff reported that Alpha, Inc. returned its funding for Grants-in-Aid support in 2009-10 due to the event being postponed to October 2010. They will reapply for the upcoming grant cycle. TBID BOARD REPORT John Conner reported that the TBID gave direction to Level Studios to collaborate with Alpha to create a jump page for registration and hotel reservation for the GranFondo event in October 2010. Meeting adjourned 6:55 pm