Tourism Consultant V - Branded!

Will Roger Brooks' "Double D" brand be seared into Helena?

As John Harrington reports in the Aug. 22 2007 Independent Record, the Advantage Helena Committee (having no web presence that I can find), headed by Matthew Cohn, wants feedback from Helenans about tourism consultant Roger Brooks' ongoing proposal to "brand" Helena. The article references a recent 74-page assessment of the city by Brooks' organization, which is available for download here in pdf format.

Brooks, who runs Destination Development out of Olympia, Washington, has been a somewhat controversial figure in Helena since he was engaged in January of 2007, by the now-defunct Downtown Visioning Partnership, to study Helena and recommend a "brand" for the city (the DVP transmogrified into the Helena Improvement Society in May of 2007 after "misunderstandings" arose about Brooks and the perception that the project had a purely downtown focus).

In calling for feedback about the "branding" process, Roger Brooks' local advocate Jim McHugh, who heads Downtown Helena, Inc., is quoted in the Aug. 22 IR article as saying, "Something's going to happen, so if you want it to happen in a positive way, you need to direct the energy." The unsettling inference being that if something negative happens, those out of the loop will be to blame, and had better not complain.

McHugh goes on to say, "Here's an opportunity to define what our future's going to look like."

"Our future"? That brings to mind the familiar joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto being surrounded by hostile Indians, and Tonto's "What do you mean 'we', Kemo Sabe?" Helenans are an independent lot, or at least they used to be, and I hope that most would prefer to decide the "look" of their future on an individual, personal basis.

I've read the 74 pages of Roger Brooks' assessment, and I encourage all concerned to do likewise. It won't take that long; there are lots of pictures, boilerplate copy about Brook's tourism-building philosophy, photos and text about other cities (which do not share the challenges of Helena's small population, geography and climate), and - curiously - 20 pages about website design.

But Brooks does offer 55 suggestions about how Helena could improve its appeal to tourists, and some of them aren't bad. Thing is, they're observations that, in my opinion, could have been made by any Helena advertising professional, and in some cases by anyone with common sense.

One fly in Brooks' ointment is that Helena is only a tourist town for a few months a year, and Brooks is talking about spending a lot of money (taxpayer money included) to gear things for that open-season window. Yes, tourism is important to Helena, but is it vital enough to justify these proposed expenditures? None of these things come without a price tag, and they've already spent $75,000 on Brooks himself.

One thing you will notice is that Brooks emphasizes signs. Signs and more signs. And yet still more signs! One soon beings to wonder if sign makers will be the main beneficiaries if Brooks' suggestions are put into action. Sellers of patio umbrellas and plastic chairs also look to benefit, as you will see in Brooks' report.

Some of good ol' Roger's suggestions are downright questionable, such as the notion of "promoting" some businesses over others. Who would decide that, and how?

Here, in my opinion, are Brooks' good (if sometimes obvious) suggestions, in short form:
• Scale signs appropriately for their location and function.
• Make it easy to park a car.
• Clean up litter
• Street landscaping is nice.
• Make accurate information readily available to visitors.
• Letters on signs should contrast with the background.
• People need public restrooms.
• Create "blue line" walking/driving tours of historic districts. This is certainly the best idea of the lot, but did it take a $75,000 consultant to come up with it?

There are also some problematic (sometimes funny) suggestions:
• Install parking systems that take credit cards. Those are convenient, but the ones I've read about won't work if the temperature drops below about -20º, even if they have an internal heater.
• Brooks claims that "Street trees planted every 30' will increase sales [of retail stores on that street] an average of 18%". If so, would having a tree every ten feet increase sales by 54%?
• "Shorter people can't read the parking rules and regulations on [parking] meters. Be sure to post them where they can be read." Should people who are so short that they have to reach up to put coins in a parking meter be driving in the first place?
• "Merchants need to promote [on their signs] what it is they're selling first, then the name of the store." Of course, that's really up to the merchant, who probably knows their business and clientele better than Brooks.
• Brooks objects to store windows which have "fliers plastered" in them, and suggests no more than four fliers per window. It may be true that not many people will stop to read all the fliers in store windows, but I think the idea is to show support for local activities by posting such notices. Imagine telling the church bake sale or the Cub Scouts to buzz off because you already have four fliers in your window. That would not only be downright silly, it would be business suicide in a small community like Helena.

So, please read the Independent Record story and Destination Development's interesting pdf document. Then let Roger Brooks know what you think about all this. They want to know your opinion about what Helena should be known for, what unique things Helena has to offer, and how Helena can make itself a "great destination". They're taking input until about September 15 2007. Here's the email address from the IR article: theteam@destinationdevelopment.com