From this year's battle in the Florida House of Representatives to local communities across the land, it is not uncommon to see politicians challenge Destination Marketing Organizations on the amount of money they invest into professional staff.
Such attitudes may have made sense during the last century when Destination Marketing focused a lot of its attention on the purchase of visibility in print and electronic media. But, today's DMOs have evolved into a highly staff-dependent program of work that moves the ball with content generation, Social Media engagement and community story-telling. And, the talent required for this kind of advanced marketing doesn't come cheap.
But, that's what makes unsophisticated public officials crazy...as many don't believe what DMO pros do is all that hard. After all, many ran their own campaigns (and, oddly enough, won). Thus, they know (they think) marketing.
Next time someone suggests that staff compensation should be limited to some arbitrary figure that sounds good, I'd love for someone to ask why personnel compensation makes up such a high percentage of the Police Department's budget.
You want the best of the best protecting residents? You should want the best of the best inviting future residents and investors to town.
Just sayin...
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