(Continued from Page One of Our Interview)
WE: One of the types of conversations we have regularly on Columbus Underground is related to lists and national rankings. Forbes seems to produce at least 10 new lists every day. We are always quick to tout when we’re at or near the top of a significant list, and I know Experience Columbus touts those as well, but you also see some people who question the methodology of these lists. And once you get bombarded with list after list every week your eyes start to glaze over. What type of stock do you put in those kinds of things, and how do these lists affect the public image building process?
PA: You’re talking about two images here. One is the people within Columbus and what they think of it… and like I said earlier, in years past we were so self deprecating that anything released that was positive about Columbus, you’d always have somebody who would make a snide remark about it. At the same time, people who aren’t living here who don’t have that downtrodden feeling about a place that they live, they hear these positive things about Columbus and that’s nothing but positive news. That resonates throughout the country when we get tabbed as one of the Top 10 best fall vacation areas in the world by National Geographic Magazine. I don’t know what all of the people here think about that, but I know that got a huge amount of attention and gained us a lot of interest in our business about what Columbus is really all about. And what that does is help us to then open the doors to tell our story to a much broader audience than what we would ever have if we didn’t have the number one zoo or the number one science center or the number one library system. So yeah, there will be people here who talk cynically about those kinds of things, but you know…
WE: The grass is always greener?
PA: Exactly. That’s no suprirse.
WE: We’ve been talking a lot about branding, imaging and marketing, and over the past decade or so, there’s been various efforts, initiatives and campaigns launched. Some seem to work well, and others not so well. I have heard from some people that you can’t truly brand a city. Even a city like New York doesn’t have one universal message because it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Moving forward from the current branding campaigns going on right now, what things should we keep in mind when discussing our image and our brand and how we analyze all of that?
PA: Well, there’s a couple of things here on two major fronts. One, is that you can certainly brand a community. “I Love New York”. That slogan has stuck for the past 30 years. You look at Indianapolis which has anointed themselves thirty-some years ago as the Amateur Sports Capital of the World. And that created a distinction for them, that now they have gone way beyond. Yes, they are still very much an athleticaly-oriented community, yet now they’re known for so much more. They have expanded so strategically, and it’s because they chose to brand themselves. If you think of Austin, The Live Music Capital of the World… you know that they branded themselves with that, and people go there for that.
So you can certainly brand a city. But what you can’t do is go out and tell your community what you think the brand is, whether they like it or not. Thats why in a community you have to float these things, you’ve got to talk to people, you’ve got to get input. And you eventually have to get ownership for whatever that brand distinction is that you want to put out there. If you don’t do that, 99% of the people who hear what you think the slogan and logo should be will fail to show support for it, and you’ll never be able to project that authentically out to the world. So, you must go through a community process and I think our community has done that over a long period of time now. Eventually you’ll hear more emerge about the brand, above and beyond the essence that has already been created with a lot of input from lots of different circles within the community. It’s a process, and it should have an aspirational objective, because you want to have authenticity combined with aspiration.
WE: You mentioned earlier the strategic plan that went into the Hilton hotel development, which we just saw open in October. What sort of long and short term gains would you expect to come out of that development finally being completed?
PA: Well, number one, as you said, it was one of the more strategically created hotel properties that the community has ever put together. The Hyatt was one of the first strategic projects, and it did very well. And then there was a lot of nonstrategic development, which was developer driven and profit motivated. That was done without going out to the customer and asking what they need in Columbus for them to come here. When we talk to the customer, they tell us that they’re not looking for a handful of limited service hotels. In fact, many national associations will not even list limited service hotels on their registration form. So what we needed was a nationally known flagship full-service convention hotel. Our customers said that unless we were willing to do that as a community, we shouldn’t count on them ever coming there.
So, the community got together, from the political sector to the private sector to the civic organizations, and they sat down and figured out what we need to do. And once they understood what they needed to do, now the strategy took place of how we needed to do it. It took a lot of work and we can thank the Convention Facility Authority and the County Commissioners and the Mayor’s Office because they’re the ones that made it happen. Because this hotel would never have been built only with private sector developer money. A private developer would have looked at it and said it’s not going to give them the profits that building a limited service hotel will. Which is fine but if you’re looking for the betterment of the entire community and not just one project’s profitability, then you’ve got to be looking at how you can build the entire base and generate all the income potential for our community. And to do that you’ve got to be strategic.
WE: One of the ideas to emerge from the 2010 Downtown Development Plan discussions was the idea of expanding the Convention Center through a Field House Facility. It was pitched as an idea that could boost indoor sporting event capacity to support the numerous volleyball, cheerleading and gymnastic events we host each year, as well as even serve as a resource for local to participate in intramural sports. Has there been any discussion beyond those initial brainstorming session as to whether or not this is a feasible project in the future?
PA: Well, the discussions certainly have continued and I like the way they’re continuing because unlike in the past where someone would say, “great idea, let’s just do that”, there is now more analysis as to what the right kind of expansion would generate the largest impact financially for the community. So there’s lots of other ideas floating out there that were built on that field house discussion. As these start to come together there will be a consensus as to what the next expansion would be.
Communities that have been the most successful at expanding their major trade show, convention and sporting event business have been the ones that understand there will always be an imbalance between the amount of function space available and hotel space available. So the next discussion now that the Hilton is open automatically should be about the expansion of the convention facilities or events facilities. The Convention Facilities Authority is taking a leadership role in that and at some point in the future you’ll hear about the next step in moving forward. After that is announced and timelines are drawn, then hopefully next we’ll have a discussion about the next hotel, maybe placed on the north side of the Convention Center. Those are the kinds of conversations that you want the community involved in on an ongoing basis. That is not only practical but it demonstrates that the community is energized.
WE: You mentioned the 200Columbus initiative earlier and the purpose of that being to build community pride and to celebrate the Bicenntennial. With only three more weeks to go in 2012, how would you say that campaign has gone?
PA: We have been very proud to be part of the campaign. We really wanted to show off our community to our community. The “A Way Forward” program that Doug Kridler did at the University where you had all of these marketing folks from all of the corporations and businesses and organizations sitting down. There must have been 250 people sitting down talking about our image development for the community and what it shuold look like. There was a lot of good things that came out of that meeting. It was that kind of process that emerged from the bicentennial programming. There are some other things that are still being talked about that I hope take place relative to convening the community once again. The Mayor had previously hosted the Citizens Summit with 3000 people, and the input from that was incredible. What was great about that was that the citizens realized that their voice was very important and counted in this process. And boy did that create energy in the community. The bicentennial has resurrected that feeling of importance of the community coming together and seeing itself in the mirror in a way that has really generated some pride way above and beyond where it was 13 years ago.
WE: Another one of the things we discuss week in and week out on Columbus Underground is the topic of the future of the city. Where we’re going and what things the city needs to do to move to the next level. We have conversations regularly about rail-based transportation infrastructure, we’ve been talking recently about what should be done with the land around Vet’s Memorial and COSI, and there’s been a lot of discussion about the development of new apartment communities in the urban core of the city. Of those things or anything else, what do you think are some of the key pieces to keep Columbus moving forward?
PA: All of those things! The Scioto Peninsula plans are very exciting, but the fact that CDDC is out there asking for input on this development is also incredibly important. The Scioto Mile is very exciting as to what’s been done there. I also like idea of the Convention Center expansion.
But those projects are inadvertently helping the other smaller things that are going to be affected by all of that. That includes the many new Downtown small businesses that are emerging. That wouldn’t be happening without the talk of the big picture and having some of these magnificent ideas about what could be added to the community.
At the same time, you want to be thinking how those projects are contributing to what the aspirational vision is. What do we want to be as a community in the 21st century and 22nd century? A lot of it has to do with the feeling that people get when they are coming into this community. You know how people talk about the friendliness of the Midwest? In our Experience Columbus aspirational plans we have six major initatives. One of them has to do with transportation. One has to do with infrastructure development. But one has to do with the experience that people have when they come here. That iniatiave along with our certified amabasdor program are things that touch the hearts and minds of people that come to our community above and beyond the individual projects. Yes, they feel good to be there. But people need to sense something different about your community and give them a desire to be here because of what it feels like.
That may seem vague, but there are things you can’t touch that can touch you, and we have to maintain that authentic midwest sense from the folks that live here. We need to take that sense and project it across thousands of people in our community. You don’t want to limit it to just projects. But as long as we’re talking in those complete circles about Columbus and its future, we’ll get there.
WE: Well, my last question, and possibly most important question, is what’s next for you?
PA: I am retiring at the end of this year and our plan is to keep our home here. We love where we live near where Fishinger crosses the Scioto River and we’re planning to keep that. We’re also planning to be more like the typical Ohio retiree, so you may not see a lot of me in the winter time! My mother and father and two boys who grew up during my Disney days in Florida all live down there. So we’ll be spending some more time down there with them.
It’s interesting that you ask because once I made my retirement announcement I had a number of organizations call and ask if I’d maybe consider an opportunity with them. But I had to tell them to let me get retired first and let me get my successor in place at Experience Columbus and clear my head a little bit. And if they’re still interested after that then maybe we can talk.
But in the meantime, I’m retiring. My sons and my wife and I love to do adventure travelling together, and the boys are planing a trip to India for next year so we’re looking forward to that.
WE: Sounds like fun. Thanks again for taking the time today!
PA: Thank you, Walker.
More information about Experience Columbus can be found at www.experiencecolumbus.com.