Sunday, Jun. 22, 2008

Doing more for less

Leader finds ways to lure tourists on tight budget

Scott Schult hopes at the very least he can bring some continuity to the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce as its vice president of marketing.

He's got one hump cleared: He's been here for three months, longer than many of his predecessors.

But on top of that, as the person in charge of getting the word out to millions of potential tourists across the eastern United States and the world, he wants a unified message, images and themes.

Plus, last week he got some oil thrown in his path - Myrtle Beach City Council asked the chamber to help get rid of motorcyclists in May by bringing in replacement visitors.

The challenge is, he's got to do it all on a tighter-than-expected budget. So Schult, a former defensive end at Purdue University, is getting creative.

"With the economy the way it's been, we're trying to maximize our budget every way we can," he said. "We've cut out some of the middlemen. ... I like to say efficient instead of cheap."

No money for models for ad shoots? No problem. Hold a casting call for locals and offer them gift cards to local malls, spas and attractions.

Can't afford a firm to buy and manage Internet advertising? Do it yourself, and save money while getting better results.

Schult, who most recently worked as marketing director for the St. Petersburg, Fla., convention and visitors bureau, said he doesn't even know what his budget will be for the upcoming year, but he knows it will be tight.

"It really helps you to focus that much more and be more creative, and that's a challenge, something that I like working through," Schult said.

Still, the chamber is working with a lot more money than it had in years past, when the budget was only a couple of million dollars or less.

A few things have gotten the Grand Strand and the chamber where it is today. A building boom left the area with an overabundance of hotel rooms and visitation to the area plateaued at just under 14 million visitors.

To fill those rooms, the chamber looked at the numbers and realized it needed to beef up its advertising just to begin to get to the level of other destinations' spending, such as Orlando, Fla., and Virginia Beach, Va. Those areas were outspending Myrtle Beach three or four times over per hotel room.

"The city of Myrtle Beach is in competition for the tourist dollar with every other tourist destination, unless we effectively get our name out - and we make a lot of assumptions that people know about us, when in fact people don't," said Peter MacIntyre, general manager of Ripley's Attractions in Myrtle Beach. "The marketing director is very important, because [he] will help direct where the message needs to be spread effectively, what will get the most bang for our buck, but also how."

Schult's job is to cast a net into America and catch as many vacationers as possible, and then it's up to local businesses to take over where the chamber left off.

"They are the ones that represent Myrtle Beach outside of the Myrtle Beach community," said Deb Bramlett, marketing director for Coastal Grand Myrtle Beach mall. "Once the Myrtle Beach chamber has gotten them, [I] step in and take over and get them to my shopping center."

The job as the chamber's marketing director has seen its share of turnover in recent years. Five people have had the job in the past seven years.

Schult said that didn't worry him, and he's up to the challenge.

"It's a great opportunity, there's a ton of challenges here, from all aspects," he said. "That just makes the job fun and intriguing."

Schult's first project will be a four-minute video showcasing the destination, featuring shots from places such as Broadway at the Beach and Brookgreen Gardens, and more than 50 of the 180 locals who showed up for the casting call.

But the footage the chamber got over the past week is really just the start. Schult hopes to build a huge library of images and video the chamber can use for ads, online videos and media kits.

The budget for the weeklong video shoot is $120,000, an amount officials consider quite a deal.

"We're going on the sly here," Schult said.

There was supposed to be more money for the project, but the slumping hotel industry has hurt the chamber. Nearly 20 percent of the chamber's annual budget comes from a tax on hotel rooms. The Horry County area has seen that tax revenue, from the accommodations tax that guests pay on lodging, slip slightly, from $857,690 in the third quarter last year to $855,489 in the third quarter this year, according to figures from the S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism.

In some cases, Schult and his employees realized they could do things better for less money.

For example, instead of hiring an outside firm to manage Internet advertising, Schult asked his Internet marketing manager, Bill Rosenthal, to take over the job himself. Rosenthal had been monitoring the work done by the outside firm anyway, and it allowed the chamber to make changes faster. Plus, it saved the chamber the agency's commission, roughly $60,000 to $80,000, Schult said.

Schult hopes to build an interactive Web site full of multimedia material - but how that will look is still undecided.

In the upcoming year, a much higher portion of the chamber's marketing budget will be spent online and on TV, while magazine advertising will go down, Schult said.

Part of the online strategy is to reach out to specific types of visitors; for example, the chamber bought ads that will pop up when people search for pet-friendly hotels, and the ads take them to a page featuring Myrtle Beach area hotels that allow pets.

For Schult, he's got one more motivating factor to succeed, which will surely make members of the chamber's board of directors happy.

"From what I can tell in my short time here, I've decided to call Myrtle Beach home," he said. "I'm very happy here. ... The destination grows on me each and every day."

Title | Vice president of marketing

Company | Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce

Age | 41

Family | Wife, Nyeita; daughter Maquenzie, 6; son Zachary, 5

Education | B.S. in hotel management, Purdue University; M.S. in marketing, Purdue University

Hometown | Grew up in East Detroit, attended high school in Las Vegas

Most recent book read | "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick M. Lencioni