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VEGAS INC CHALLENGE IS BRANDING DIFFERENT AGENCIES IN A COMBINED DEPARTMENT VECCHIO, FROM PAGE 1 your response? What's the biggest challenge about gas are a little hesitant to go out there be- What has been the biggest eye- opener for you in terms of marketing tourism in the state? I think the big surprise was the fact that there is so much in this state that people don't know is here. There are the Valley of Fire, Great Basin National Park and the Ruby Mountains. And there are some great special events in this state. Because there are – and rightly so – great VECCHIO in Las Vegas and Reno, some of these really extraordinary things get overlooked. I didn't know they were here, and I consider myself to be someone who knows the world and the good things that there are to see. It also has been a surprise the level of education we have to do to help people understand what there is besides Las Ve- gas and Reno. When you're driving along, all these great wonderful things are just five minutes off the freeway, but nobody knows they're there because there's no signage, no rest stops, no visitor services infrastructure, no nothing to help the regular person know what's in the area. That's something I feel pretty passionately about trying to change – working with the Department of Transportation and others that manage those kinds of services. Where are some of the places you have been since you arrived in Ne- vada? I'm getting out there. I've been across Interstate 80 from Wendover to Reno. I've been to Elko on a couple of occasions and was there for the Cowboy Poetry Gather- ing, which I love. I went out for the open- ing of the California Trail Interpretive Center, which is an extraordinary facility about 10 miles west of Elko. They've posi- tioned it so that not only is it on the Cali- fornia Trail, but you can see where the trail splits as it goes west. It's really smart. The facility is just gorgeous and definitely worth the trip out there. I was out in Ely not too long ago and came across Highway 50, which is aptly called "the Loneliest Road." There are some wonderful little towns along there that are fun to see. I was up with some State Parks folks on Highway 93 to some of the parks up in Lincoln County. We didn't get as far as Great Basin, but we did get to Kershaw-Ryan and Cathedral all that. I can see why people who live in Las Ve- make it work. 16 | 26 NOVEMBER 2012 | cause you're into nothing pretty quickly, marketing Nevada? and there are very few gas stations and services out there. It's a little intimidating to make the trip. When I've been down in Southern Nevada, I've been to Hoover Dam, Lake some incredible natural resources, like Mead and Boulder City. I still need to do the U.S. 95 corridor, because I keep flying between Carson City and Las Vegas. Because of agency consolidation, the Tourism Commission also markets the arts, museums and Indian culture. marketing machines What challenges have you faced as a re- sult of that consolidation? Each of those agencies still does some of their own marketing, because they have their own marketing needs. The Nevada Arts Council does a lot of grants giving, so their marketing needs are significantly different from the museums, which have to work to get people in the door. The Nevada Indian Commission is very different because they spend a lot of time on the social services of Native Ameri- cans – education, health care and daily living kinds of things, with the tourism piece being a part of it. In total, I think the challenge is that every entity has to retain its own iden- tity while trying to find the overarching brand of the organization and how that all ties into the yet-to-be-determined brand of the state. We're kind of finding ourselves, while retaining the individual- ity of these different organizations. Arts and museums are under your purview, but state parks – something your office promotes – are not. Should the Tourism Commission be tied more closely to parks? I think having them be a part of the natural resources department is a good place for them to be. We are tied very closely to parks, and I think the interagen- cy cooperation and collaboration is really important. We do some state park brochures and some collateral materials with them, and we promote the state parks in what we do. We're also trying to work more closely with the Department of Wildlife because hunting is a big part of tourism in Nevada, and we're trying to integrate that message into what we're doing and help promote the wildlife piece of this, too. I don't know that it matters so much where these components are housed. The State Historic Preservation Office, which is very closely tied to museums and his- tory, oversees natural resources as well. Gorge state parks. It was really cool to see We're housed in different places, but we have to work really closely together to There are a couple of technical chal- lenges. I mentioned that infrastructure is a big challenge. It's no surprise that there's world-class, best-in-the-business market- ing coming out of Las Vegas. That's part people. The marketing challenge of the state is to try to craft the message of Nevada and the unique offerings outside of the Las Vegas market, while still being very syner- gistic with what they're doing. advertising to public relations, because we can't advertise. We don't have the dol- lars to advertise the differences between the rest of Nevada and these two big ur- ban centers. But we do have the PR abil- ity to drive social-media conversations and to get media coverage. The media out there in the travel and leisure world loves these kinds of stories that aren't the ones that are always being told. I think they'll embrace these other-side-of-Nevada kinds of stories. That's the age-old issue with Nevada, trying to find a message that's different yet synergistic with the big players. Is it intimidating to be in the same room with Las Vegas? We had a group of seven travel industry professionals from throughout the state that were part of the evaluation commit- tee, and we all worked to follow the rules to a T in this process. When we started, I had asked how of the reason I'm here, to learn from those many points extra you give to a Nevada company. When I had done this in Ohio, there was a 10 percent advantage to Ohio companies. They said there was no prefer- ence. As we started moving through this process and we got our responses back, We're taking this whole program from the evaluation committee scored the re- sponses based on their merit. It was clear when we went through the responses that there was a difference between the ones we got from Nevada companies and the ones that we got from the national-level companies. The goal from the Nevada Tourism Commission all along was to get the best and the brightest. And the best ended up coming from outside Nevada. I knew going through this that it has al- ways been an issue for people in my role in other states, and there probably would be some conversation about this. After we did the initial selection of finalists, I brought the whole staff together and I said, "Folks, the committee has selected all out-of-state vendors. It's going to get at- tention." And it did. It's exciting because we have so much to gain from that. Learning from what they do is really fun. Thank goodness they're there. I think we need to do a better job of inte- grating what they're doing into what we're doing. There has been some separation in the past between us. It's certainly OK for them; they don't need us. But we definitely I think the conversation was always good. We followed the process, we did what we needed to do, and we're incred- ibly pleased with who we got. They have really stepped up to the plate, and they have a lot to do. The expectations now are about six times higher than they would have been if this had just been normal, and we know that. But I think Burson- need them. I would welcome the chance Marsteller is up to the challenge. to do that even more. What's the status of developing a brand identity for the state? That's been ongoing for several months. It's actually been ongoing for more than a year. We had an agency, GreenRubino, doing the brand development and they did some really good research. The lan- The commission also voted to spend $600,000 to sponsor the Reno air rac- es. How did the state benefit from that deal? They were very careful to take this $600,000 and craft it into a sponsorship, just like a sponsorship we would have for any event. There was a very long list of guage that they used to identify and dif- marketing considerations. ferentiate this state down to its core DNA is wonderful. Now, we have a new agency on board, Burson-Marsteller, that is going to drive the creative beyond this point. They've also been given the tagline project come up with a tagline that is going to bring all this together. to Some political leaders were upset that a Nevada company wasn't select- ed for the two-year $3 million contract that Burson-Marsteller won. What's This title sponsorship will be in place for at least three years. We'll be able to extend our brand through the kind of marketing this event does. It makes business sense, and it's also a good community gesture. Both ways, it worked in our favor. The response was very positive. People were very glad that this event was able to re- main in Reno. With this precendent set, how will the commission be able to reject spon- sorship requests for other events in the