Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 27, 1994 TAG: 9402240035
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MICHAEL CSOLLANY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
He's a smooth marketing man who could sell you a bridge or convince you\ he's got cold fusion in a bottle.
He uses phrases like "subliminal messages," "it's just common sense," and\ "win-win-win-win" to sell economic growth in the state.
But don't get him wrong. He's sincere, and he's not pushing lemons or\ placebos.
But what this master-pitchman has sold to Southwest Virginia is a way to\ promote tourism without any money.
Crossan's concept is simple: get businesses outside of Southwest Virginia to advertise for the region, and get them to pay Southwest Virginia for the privilege.
Sound tricky?
Nah. This is exactly the program that Crossan, a marketing manager for AT&T\ in Richmond, fashioned for Virginia's Southwest Blue Ridge Highlands Inc. - a\ tourism group that promotes the 19 Virginia counties and four cities west of\ Roanoke.
The Virginia Society of Certified Public Accountants has been a member of\ Virginia Southwest's "Honors Program" for three years.
For CPAs to participate, they pay a fee to the Southwest organization. For that fee, the group gets to print a listing of attractions in Southwest Virginia in "Disclosures" - its monthly publication. In addition, a coupon offers 10 percent off at selected sites and accommodations.
CPAs are encouraged to explore Southwest Virginia, and to give their clients photocopies of the listing/coupon as a public relations tool.
Everybody wins, Crossan said. The CPAs win because they get a coupon for discounts in Southwest Virginia and a marketing tool to build client relationships. Southwest Virginia wins because it gets tourists. Merchants win because they didn't have to pay anything for advertising.
And Crossan will pull out testimonials and charts from his collection of briefcases to prove it.
Cindy Gray, director of public relations for the CPA Society, is still gung-ho on the program after three years of membership.
"We have a chapter from Southwest Virginia, and we almost feel that they are so far away sometimes that we can't do anything to help them," Gray said.
But to promote economic growth in Southwest Virginia by promoting tourism there, Gray said, the society creates business for the chapter. "If we help the economy in Southwest Virginia, we help our members out there."
She said the coupons also are a good benefit that the society can provide for its members and its members can provide for their clients.
"The members that have taken advantage of the vouchers have come back saying very positive things . . . The first time I went to Southwest Virginia, I was shocked. It was just beautiful. It's a well-kept secret that we're trying to let out of the hat," she said.
After test marketing the honors program and its coupons last year, the tourism group plans to expand on the idea this year with a new pull/push strategy. The group will pull tourists into the region using 10 percent discounts for resorts, bed and breakfasts and cruises. Once the tourist is here, a community, such as Pulaski, will have additional coupons for shopping discounts available to push the tourist out into local stores and restaurants.
Again, Crossan said the promotions will cost virtually nothing for participants, just a benefit of being a member of the regional Southwest group or of a local group that is co-sponsoring this tourism effort.
Kitty Grady, information director for the town of Wytheville and president of Virginia's Southwest Blue Ridge Highlands Inc., the regional tourism and economic development group, said Southwest Virginia already has benefited from the tourism project.
The group has linked up through this public-private partnership not only with AT&T but also with Jefferson National Forest and Virginia Tech to market the area.
In fact, the vision for this effort grew out of a tourism and economic development task force headed by the dean of Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business, Richard Sorensen.
The group, which was part of the Lacy Commission's study of economic development in Southwest Virginia, recommended creating an umbrella tourism/economic development group for this region from Montgomery County west to the state line. Sorensen served as the group's founding president and started the university's involvement in the area's tourism efforts.
Crossan volunteered his marketing services after reading a study called Tourism 2000 about Virginia's need to market itself more aggressively through public/private partnerships. The tourism project seemed a natural extension of Crossan's marketing work to expand AT&T's business statewide.
State officials pointed Crossan toward Southwest Virginia because it was lagging behind the rest of the state in tourism development and it had volunteers with Virginia's Southwest Blue Ridge Highlands group ready to promote the region.
Working together, the association began developing marketing projects that would have been out of reach of any one company.
Out is an old regional brochure the association was photocopying on legal paper.
In is a four-color foldable map of the region, with illustrations and inset maps of communities in Southwest Virginia.
The $43,000 it cost to print 200,000 copies of this brochure was not charged to the tourism association but rather to the advertisers on the back of the map.
A pair of lips on the map subliminally remind viewers of the Virginia Is For Lovers campaign.
"Slowly but surely, things have been trickling down here," Grady said, noting that coupons from the program have been making their way from the other side of the state.
These programs may already have had an impact. Visitor center traffic for Southwest Virginia is growing at a rate of 30 percent compared to the state total of 10 percent, according to the Virginia Travel Barometer.
"We're really pleased with everything we've done, and we've done it without spending any money," Grady said. "Southwest Virginia used to be lower than low. We used to be in the negatives. But now there are some times of the year when we get more visitors than some other regions."
New River Valley committee members include Jill Barr, Radford's economic development director; and Roscoe Cox, director of Pulaski's Main Street program.
The regional group is confident enough of its successes that it is developing plans to share its ideas with other rural areas. At the end of 1994, the group plans to release a study on tourism promotion on a zero budget that Crossan predicts will have "a far-reaching economic impact" on many other communities.
by CNB