Newton CVB likely to dissolve

The Newton Convention and Visitors Bureau will likely dissolve after the city council agreed Monday to create a city-based marketing position.

Following a recommendation by the Newton City Council CVB Study Group, the council agreed unanimously to move forward with plans to establish a new city board to create a new city staff position to guide and provide expertise to the broad community marketing effort.

Option One, as it is named, was selected following a presentation by councilman Steven Mullan on the work findings of the study group over a 60 day research period.

Mullan laid out the process the group underwent including reviewing applicable comprehensive plan recommendations, reviewing a summary of the current CVB operations, looking at other community’s efforts in marketing, tourism and communications and an articulation of prioritized community needs. Working alongside him were council members Evelyn George and Jeremy Biondi.

“One of the fun activities that we did at the start was a white board activity where we brainstormed why people would want to come to Newton. When we got done the board was filled — it was enlightening,” Mullan said.

The group identified the following needs as important to the city moving forward:

• A community centralized web presence to ensure information is easily found and accessed.

• Ensuring a cohesive and audience appropriate message is communicated.

• A broad marketing approach, not just tourism oriented.

• Growing the number of visitors to the community and responding to requests for proposals or applying for conferences, sporting events, etc. to be held in Newton.

• Data collection and measurement of activities and successes.

Several areas in the comprehensive plan, which was established to help guide the city in the direction set by the city council, were found applicable to the group when beginning its research. Those areas included economic development, the city’s tourism initiative and community marketing and the Get To Know Newton brand.

Next, the group reviewed the current CVB operations, learning what the goals of the CVB are and how it sees itself within the community.

In the group’s report they quoted CVB Board Chair Beth Steenhoek stating, “a CVB is the marketing arm of the community; or better yet, the advertising agency. A CVB is an organization that promotes a town, city, region, or country in order to increase its number of visitors. It promotes the development and marketing of a destination, focusing on convention sales, tourism marketing, and services.”

Further statements from Steenhoek gave the role of Newton’s CVB as an organization to market the community to conference/meeting planners and encourage those people to choose Newton as a location to hold their meeting or conference. They found the CVB does not necessarily participate in or organize events than with advertising assistance or through grant dollars or in-kind advertising for event.

An exception to that role is the CVB’s part in the coordination of the Miss Iowa USA and Miss Iowa Teen USA pageants where the organization serves as coordinator of the event.

The group also compared and contrasted the Hotel-Motel tax use and what tourism type activities are supported by several local communities.

“With what other communities do with their council funding, their CVB or their chamber of commerce, they are kind of all over the place. Not only with the amounts of money but what the money is actually geared toward,” Mullan said.

Of those researched, Grinnell utilizes a city tourism committee that brings recommendations to the city council. They receive 50 percent of the hotel motel tax and focus on renovating museums, bike trails and recreational activities. Knoxville and Carroll both rely on the local chamber and fund it annually $25,000 and $22,000, respectively.

A new trend growing within local governments, the group found, is establishing communications department. In central Iowa, the group reviewed three communities, Johnston, Ankeny and Waukee, and their relatively new communications departments.

The departments were found to be only a few years old, and have limited staff working in conjunction with other departments to promote effective communication to public and private parties interested in municipal issues. The group found the departments rely heavily on social media for spreading information to the public and attempt to coordinate statements and news from all departments to maintain brand/image consistency city-wide.

At the conclusion of its research, the group presented two options to the council: Option One, hiring a new position for the city and creating a new city board and Option Two, creating a nonprofit board with which the city would contract with to provide marketing services.

Option One would see the hire of a community marketing manager and the creation of a Get to Know Newton Board. The manager would be placed within the finance and development department and would have the advantage of direct oversight and control over the marketing efforts as well as a better ability to take on a broader perspective and approach.

“The board would be a five to seven member board and membership would be represented by various areas of expertise and specialization, education and schools, housing, marketing, hospitality industry such as restaurant, hotels and catering and the hospital,” Mullan said. “They would act in some degree independently in small amounts, items that deal with small amounts of money. Large amounts of money they would have to come to the city council.”

The second option would be similar to the current arrangement with the CVB. A community marketing manager would be hired by the nonprofit agency with the Get To Know Newton Board acting as a stand-alone partner agency/board.

The study group unanimously agreed on Option One as the preferred way of the city to move forward.

“I think the significant difference in what we were looking for was comprehensive marketing the entire community including the schools and health care, all of the reasons that people would come to visit family or an event,” George said. “It ties into discussion we had earlier about having a combined or collaborative website. When people are looking for information and they go to a website, whether it is housing or an event, they go to one place.”

Councilwoman Miranda Kulis agreed and said in talking with numerous members of city organizations, she has found leaders working outside of their expertise when it comes to marketing efforts such as social media or building a website.

“That is one thing I like about this is that the person would have those skills to focus on really collaborating and making sure we have one voice, one message with regards to what going out of our community,” Kulis said.

No action was taken by the council on the subject and further discussions are planned for what the timeline and transition would look like to accomplish the agreed upon option.

Contact Jamee A. Pierson at 641-792-3121 ext. 6534 or jpierson@newtondailynews.com