Committee Recomended Marketing Board
Courtesy graphics. Both the Sun Valley Marketing Alliance and independent marketing committee’s organizational charts call for two separate branches: a marketing board in charge of external advertising and a chamber of commerce overseeing local activities, such as events and visitors services.
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Nils Ribi rose out of his chair and stepped off the platform at the front of the room, promptly walking toward the audience and away from his fellow Sun Valley city leaders.
"Councilman Ribi, you must stay at the dais," said Mayor Wayne Willich, who was talking with another city councilman at Wednesday's meeting, still in session. "You either have respect for this group, and me in particular, or recuse yourself from the discussion."
The five-member group was split into a pair of opposing camps. Willich and Councilwoman Joan Lamb, joining the meeting via conference phone, stood on one side of the fence, while Ribi and Councilman Bob Youngman stood on the other. Councilman Dewayne Briscoe was caught in the middle.
Ribi argued that he was just stretching his legs, to which Youngman came to his defense.
"And, Joan, you can't drink that coffee," Youngman jested.
"Why don't you just walk around the chair while you're stretching your legs," Willich told Ribi, "and not walk away and turn your back to me."
Youngman said that he, "for the record," didn't find Ribi's action disrespectful.
But Ribi wasn't arguing with Youngman. They have outspokenly, over the past week, shared the belief that the city should abandon its plan of funding a new resort-area marketing board to the tune of $400,000 this year. Up to now, Ribi and Youngman were strong proponents of taking all funding away from the local chamber and visitors bureau, and giving this money and more to the newly formed board, which would take the bureau's place as Sun Valley's advertiser to the world. But, Ribi and Youngman said, their minds have changed because of the board's Sept. 14 merger with the Sun Valley-Ketchum Chamber & Visitors Bureau, creating the Sun Valley Marketing Alliance. Youngman has also recently asserted that the city shouldn't fund marketing.
"Businesses should be funding any and all marketing initiatives," Youngman said, adding that the city has historically funded marketing and weaning it will take up to three years.
Youngman and Ribi initiated another sharp turn Wednesday when they said the city should drop its newly hatched effort to hire a "marketing specialist." That person would be completely independent from the alliance and serve as an interim advertiser of upcoming Sun Valley events until the alliance gets established. The two said the city should instead fund events on a case-by-case basis, making organizers file an application specifying how each dollar would be spent, the economic benefit to the city and more. Youngman recommended that an audit be conducted after the event to ensure funds were spent as indicated.
Willich and Lamb said this approach is rational but too passive, relying on people to come to the city instead of the other way around, and advocated the proactive marketing-specialist approach.
"This is not something we can do ad-hoc," Lamb said.
Youngman and Ribi argued against the marketing specialist because this person is meant to be temporary, with his/her efforts being handed over to the marketing board. The two said this wouldn't work because the marketing board no longer exists in the form that the committee—which Youngman formed—proposed. The committee was established to suggest a marketing initiative based on research of the local economy and other resort towns. And the alliance has strayed from the formula, Ribi and Youngman contend.
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But the alliance is almost identical in structure to what the committee suggested, argued alliance president and marketing board member Jake Peters and Ketchum Mayor Randy Hall, in an interview. Ketchum also pledged $400,000 to the marketing board, but unlike Sun Valley, all its city council members and mayor are standing behind the new alliance.
Peters was sitting in the front row at the Sun Valley council's Wednesday meeting and raised his hand to rebut allegations concerning the alliance. But Willich forbade him to speak.
Without knowing the alliance's plans, Councilman Dewayne Briscoe said, he couldn't make an informed decision one way or the other in hiring a marketing specialist. If he had to vote, he said, he'd vote against hiring a marketing specialist.
"If I don't understand it, I can't vote for it," Briscoe said.
In the end, the council didn't vote on the issue but waited until the alliance's plans could be heard.
Alliance leader defends merger
Mayor Hall and alliance leader Peters sat down for an interview with the Idaho Mountain Express on Wednesday. Peters explicitly addressed Youngman's reasons, outlined in his written position statement, for why the marketing board's "replacement," the alliance, is "unacceptable."
First of all, Peters said, the alliance doesn't "dissolve," as Youngman put it, the marketing board that Sun Valley approved for $400,000. True, the alliance may have nine board members instead of the marketing board's five because the chamber of commerce's four board members were added. Youngman said nine board members is "cumbersome," yielding "little or no productive work."
However, Peters said, the marketing board—and its original five members—remains separate from the chamber, having sole control of marketing efforts and the total $800,000 that the cities have pledged for marketing, as before. He said the cities wouldn't be funding the chamber. And the chamber's four board members would oversee only event planning, visitor services and business memberships, with no voting power concerning the alliance's budget.
Peters said this division of power between the chamber and marketing board within the alliance are identical to the structure that the committee recommended and Youngman said he supports.
"This is essentially what he wanted," Peters said, pointing to the alliance's organizational chart and then the very similar chart that Youngman's committee presented on May 18 for its recommended marketing board.
"It's really semantics," Hall added.
Peters said Youngman's resistance comes in seeing that the chamber's board is included alongside the marketing board.
"That's where he shuts off, and that's where he gives up," Peters said. "Because we decided to call it the chamber, we lose him."
Both Youngman and Ribi have repeatedly said the area can no longer rely on the chamber for marketing the area.
"We can't go back to a failed organization," Ribi said during the meeting Wednesday.
But, Peters reiterated, the chamber wouldn't have its hand or even a pinky on marketing. He said a merger was needed, though.
"There is a particularly profound reason they [the marketing board and chamber] should be together," Peters said. "If not, we would be competing for Idaho Travel Council dollars."
The travel council gives more than $2 million in grants to local tourist organizations annually. The chamber was given $201,000 for fiscal 2011, but the marketing board didn't receive a penny because it didn't have its nonprofit status yet.
"With the merger, the chamber has no control of Sun Valley's $400,000, but the marketing board can use the chamber's Idaho Travel Council money," Peters said.
Youngman's other overwhelming concern has been that the alliance has dropped plans of hiring a professional marketer to lead the board's advertising effort as its CEO.
"The hiring of a CEO is essential and required, as the injection of experience, knowledge and professionalism ... is critical to its success," Youngman wrote in his position statement.
Peters said that even though the alliance said it's seeking a marketing agency to develop a strategic plan, that doesn't mean it wouldn't consider hiring a full-time CEO. He said the agency thought it prudent to come up with its plan first before spending a lot of money and time hiring a CEO it may not need. Once a plan is developed, he said, the alliance could better decide what it needs in a CEO.
Perhaps the greatest point of departure for Youngman and Ribi has been their repeatedly voiced distrust with the alliance for not being consulted before the merger took place. They, and the other Sun Valley City Council members, said they heard about it through the grapevine after the merger was announced.
On that point, Peters said he had been updating the Ketchum and Sun Valley mayors every few days, assuming they'd passed on the marketing board's news to their respective city councils.
"I'll leave it at that," Peters said.
Trevon Milliard: tmilliard@mtexpress.com
Marketing board timeline
- January: Sun Valley City Councilman Bob Youngman presents findings that Ketchum's and Sun Valley's sales-tax declines are on par with one of the sickest economic performers in the nation—Cleveland.
- March: Youngman forms three-person committee to put together a comprehensive look at the economy's decline and a potential marketing strategy everyone can depend on.
- May: Committee recommends that the Sun Valley-Ketchum Chamber & Visitors Bureau and its $1.2 million budget be split down the middle, with a marketing board being created and given half to advertise Sun Valley to outside areas. This marketing board should also be given $400,000 a year for the next three years, on top of the $600,000.
- June: Ketchum and Sun Valley each pledge $400,000 to marketing board and none to chamber/visitors bureau.
- Aug. 4: Idaho Travel Council awards $201,000 grant to chamber/visitors bureau for next fiscal year. Marketing board ineligible for grant.
- Aug. 10: Marketing board member, and former committee member, Jim Knight resigns.
- Mid-August: Marketing board's fifth and final member is chosen.
- Aug. 24: Visitors bureau Executive Director Carol Waller resigns.
- Sept. 14: Marketing board and visitors bureau merge to form Sun Valley Marketing Alliance.
