Tech, Travel, and Twang!
Come for the thoughts, stay for the tea. The co-founders of Destination Innovate, Jennifer Barbee and Kristen Cruz brew up the latest industry tea every Tuesday - diving into simmering issues, hot trends, and special guests. Grab a cup and let’s spill the tea!
Tech, Travel, and Twang!
Tuesday Tea #8 | You Asked for It! Part 1
Ever wondered how to breathe new life into a stagnant board? In our riveting first installment of You Asked For It!, Kristen Cruz and I, Jenn Barbee, promise to enlighten you with actionable insights on revitalizing your board dynamics. We explore the art of balancing inherited board members with fresh faces, and the necessity of fostering respectful, collaborative relationships. By understanding the motivations of your board members, you'll learn to shift perceptions and view board meetings as genuine opportunities for impactful advisement and cooperation.
Moving on to the intricacies of travel marketing, we dive deep into leveraging tools like Canva without losing the irreplaceable touch of human creativity. Discover how smaller marketing teams can effectively prioritize roles and produce a diverse array of content to meet the relentless digital demands. We also touch on the evolving role of DMOs and the critical nature of building trust-based relationships with agency partners. Finally, we emphasize the importance of flexibility and the right agency fit, setting the stage for our next exciting topic: the necessity of websites for DMOs. Don't miss this episode packed with transformative strategies for your boards and marketing initiatives! Tune in for the next couple of weeks for the Tuesday Tea You Asked For It! 3 Part Series from Tech, Travel and Twang.
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The Tech, Travel, and Twang Podcast is hosted by Co-Founders, Kristen Cruz and Jenn Barbee with Destination Innovate. Learn More! https://destinationinnovate.com/about/
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Well, hey there, welcome back to Tech Travel and Twang, our Tuesday tea editions. I'm Jen Barbie with Kristen Cruz. Hey, kristen, good morning Jen Barbie. I am excited for this little. I think it'll end up being a three-parter miniseries, I guess we could call it of our Tuesday Tea.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so we're titling this. You Asked For it.
Speaker 1:I love that I love that. The piece behind that is that Kristen and I have gone out and really had some very deep conversations with other DMO leaders, other travel and hospitality leaders, and they're like, if you could, if we ask if you could ask us anything from our experience, from you know, our travels in the travel industry, so to speak, what would it be? So we're going to do that in these next three parts of you Asked For it. So let's just kick it off with the number one and actually this came up several, several times, and that is how can we revive our boards?
Speaker 2:This was a question, actually. Boards, just in general, were a lot of the questions that we got. A lot of the topic suggestions, too, like give us. Part of the reason we asked for this, too, was we want to know, when we're doing these podcasts that we're now doing consistently every week, what is it that we should be bringing more information on? And so boards came up quite a bit.
Speaker 2:Um, I mean, I think, jen, honestly, I think everyone's board is different, right? So all the makeup of your board is very different. How it's structured, who chose the board or who chooses the board is very different, and I think, a lot of times, what makes it really challenging is that you are almost you're adopting your board, right, like, you come into this position and here is your, here's your group of people that now have to kind of roll with how you work and how you lead and what things you feel are important to present to them and ask for advice from them and those sorts of things, and I think a lot of it is relationships, I think a lot of it is yeah it really is.
Speaker 1:But sometimes you inherit those relationships like get the stepchildren. It really is. But sometimes you inherit those relationships like you get the stepchildren, so to speak. And some boards, you know, have very strict terms. And then you have boards and I think this also came up in a lot of conversations we had Then you have boards who somehow, these old boys, club people, keep staying on boards decades at a time and chokes out progress boards decades at a time and chokes out progress. So I think that there is a very big sentiment in the industry now with you know up and coming fresh new leaders, that you know we're not tolerating that stagnant board structure like that anymore.
Speaker 2:So Right, right, and I think this quite. I think this is a question that, if you're asking as a DMO leader, there's other questions you should also be asking, right, like why do I feel that I need to revive this board? How long has this board been kind of stale and stuffy and there's a lot of other questions around that. But I think again, one of the things that makes it really engaging is, I think there's a level of respect and a level of collaboration that has to be established for that board to really get passionate about what it is that you're doing and what it is that they're involved in.
Speaker 2:And sometimes when you're on a really stale board that's kind of been there for a while. You lose that along the way and it takes a lot of momentum to bring that.
Speaker 1:Right and not to say. Not to say that we can't honor the commitment of these long standing community members who have been on the board for a long period of time, but they also need some love and revivement. You don't want a board board, so you have to start with the why.
Speaker 1:So if the why, if you have a long standing I don't consider that like a boys club thing. That's a commitment to the community. You have a longstanding member in there and their why is because they love their community, Then you know how to use that board member in your toolbox for that particular thing. You've got to really think about why these people are there. Is it self-serving? Do they have a business they want to promote? That's a different type of board member.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, absolutely. And I think another thing that could be good is if there's opportunity to add a board member to a board that really isn't as engaged, that does have some renewed energy and some passion and some life blood, like, let's bring some life back into this board, then get them on the board and have someone there that can contribute to that energy that you're trying to change.
Speaker 1:And at least from my conversations, I think you probably agree with me. Most of it is a lot, especially people who are new in their leadership position and DMOs feel like that's like you know, live by the sword, die by the board, type of thing. They feel like they have to answer to the board, when the reality is the board is there to serve you, just like it would be in corporate america. It is definitely there's checks and balances and you've got to do your thing, but they're there to help you. If there's a problem, they're there to help you find the resources, to open up new avenues, to help push change forward. So if you think about the fact that the board is there to help you, then you've got a different mindset on it also.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because I think we've said that a lot of times over the years. If you don't, if you feel like you, going and doing a board meeting is a major to do for you as a leader like this is just something you're having to check off the list and something you're having to do. Whether, rather than looking at it as a way to get advisement on things going on and really get true, honest feedback and, again, more collaboration than you may have, you're looking at the board wrong in terms of how you're supposed to use it and you're not working it the way that it's intended to work.
Speaker 1:I like how we work through that piece of it, because we kind of start with how we're hearing the questions, which is, you know the board is causing issues or it's a problem or I have to answer to them. And we came around to like look at these human beings in a different light you know as resources and access for you.
Speaker 1:I love that. Let's see. Our next question that we want to tackle in this part is with tools available now, how important are content writers and graphic artists in a marketing team? I love this question, this is a big question. This is a big question.
Speaker 2:Because one, two, I think well, the content just in general is extremely important.
Speaker 1:No matter what tools we have available, there's always people behind the tool. We never want, like a machine or AI, to entirely control the marketing message or the content. Yeah, it's too early for that to even consider that now. But also, you know, as you are layering in to me, as you are layering in more efficient tools that have a computer mind component and AI component, however you want to call it, you need your veteran content writers and you need your veteran designers to provide contextual pieces so that becomes a cohesive story. I think it's the contextual piece that that won't, you know, no time soon. I think it's. It's, it's definitely a worry. I just feel like it's way too early to worry about that.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, it is, and I think a lot of, maybe some of the question comes from those that really can't invest in large marketing teams and are having to choose between which roles to employ on their team, Like do I hire a content writer or do I hire a social media person, or do I hire someone to manage our creative or do I hire someone to, you know, go out and capture the content, the assets.
Speaker 2:So I think a lot of it boils down to think about the tools that we have available to us that do help these positions, Like Canva is another one that's a great tool for graphics and creative. It doesn't replace someone who can manage your creative and can hold that creative accountable to the brand, but it is an asset. But you may have less of these people who can manage more and be more efficient because they have the tools, but it doesn't replace the person. They are still necessary and I think you have to look at it again like two more ways when it comes from a content perspective. One is you could actually keep your content. People have all these tools and just generate more content. You know you could push more out there in more ways and be available in more formats.
Speaker 1:I love that point because that is like that's not going away.
Speaker 1:I know we've got some other questions we'll get to in our other parts about websites, but, for instance, you can't generate enough content. Honestly, in this, in this environment, as much as much messaging as we get every day, you can't create enough. So I love the fact that you're saying, yes, this is a tool that actually does allow you to do more, and then you've got the contextual leaders, the human capital, really working that in a way that you don't have to worry about being on tone, on brand, but it takes a while for that to happen. Plus, plus, it takes a really long time to even train your basic chat GPT to you know, to understand a tone. It takes a really long time. And who's going to do that?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, you have to train your, your, uh, your sidekick Helen has been a really long time, yeah, but then you have to look at some of the other types of content that, as marketers, especially in travel and tourism, that we have to consider. And that's content that's from other people, right, like travelers and, you know, collaborators or influencers, whatever we want to call them in the destination. But there's content that you kind of, as a marketer, have to go out and get and then figure out how to regurgitate that, whether that's experiences going on or a story that's related to the destination. But there's that content that no machine is going to be able to pull out of people.
Speaker 1:And so that's still very important. You know, or even curating, because here's what they like. Talk about a massive shift for DMOs. You've got to remember pre-social media, dmos were only producing a visitor's guide, maybe a good website. That was it. That was the content they weren't blogging. They weren't doing any of this. Now, all of a sudden, their core function of marketing is not as much advertising as it is content creation. So I would love to explore at some point with other data scientists and leaders in the industry like is that, has that been the right shift?
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, because if you look at a content plan for DMOs, now their content plan is so much more robust, like it is where it used to be. Like here's our, here's our list of content needs. Right, like, here's what we're going to go and we're going to write about this month. And now it's like, okay, I've got needs over here, here, here, in these types of formats, with this type of asset, and this I mean it is getting complex, so I would love to explore like does has that complexity returned you know mitigating results for us or has this created more compression?
Speaker 2:I don't know that. No, I don't think we do. I don't think we do, and I think another point to this question that's worth talking about is just maybe the type of role, like when you're talking about a content writer versus a content manager that's where the complexity of managing all the various types of content using tools could come from is someone who's managing the content, not necessarily just writing it. So I think that's an important thing to consider, depending on the size of your destination and the amount of people on your team, you know, and how that makes up. But if you're producing quite a bit of content, I think having someone from a content manager perspective is important.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, Absolutely. And then, once you have a good, once you have good managers just a quick reminder hire smart people and then let them do their jobs. If you try to micromanage on what tools and what AI, you're going to drive yourself insane.
Speaker 2:Yourself insane, your people insane, your team insane. The whole world will go insane.
Speaker 1:Yes, awesome, okay. So question three for you. Asked for it is how can I improve the relationship between my marketing team and agency team when it's been strained? Ooh, I like this one.
Speaker 2:This is a tea question. I think it depends on how it's been strained. Maybe we should have, we should have asked for the tea on this one, although we probably couldn't have spilled it. Um, I think again, relationships are really, really important. Obviously, I'm talking with my agency brain on right now, which is on the agents, but the agency brain on you do everything in your power to create a very collaborative, trusting relationship with your client. There is really, if something has been strained, or if there's some sort of trust lost, or if there's and it could be a number of things right, it could be missed deadlines, it could be differing opinions on what things are right and wrong, it could be, it could be a lot of things. But consistent communication and really working on that relationship Because I think that question is should be hit head on, right Between whatever the strain is like, what is causing the friction and how can we fix it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I will say from an agency side, just decades of client service and that part of it like it's real, real simple on the agency side If there's a riff, number one take accountability. I think clients are. I hear this constantly. They are so tired of this excuse and that excuse. Just take accountability. This didn't go as planned, we messed up on this and give them a solution. Never give a problem without a solution, but take accountability and get a solution in there and you will have gained probably more respect than you had before the mistake was made.
Speaker 2:And if it's a series of mistakes, like maybe this is a strange relationship because maybe they took accountability but they never really fixed the problem.
Speaker 2:I think, as an agency, you have to go back. You can't just check the accountability box and go, okay, I said I was sorry, I took accountability, I gave them a solution. But you really have to go back to the table with your team on the agency side and really ask why did we miss this? What went wrong? Why is there an issue? You know? How can we truly fix it so it doesn't happen again? Because I really feel like strained relationships between DMOs and agencies Isn't one thing or the other. It is a series of things that just burn you out as a client, like as a DMO. You don't want an agency that just continually says, okay, I'm sorry, we'll try to get it right next time, but never really gets it right. I think that's super frustrating.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So that would have been my advice to those who, once they make a mistake, they do not repeat, because that's kind of how we account from our standpoint, like we acknowledge it, we fix it and that's not going to happen again in our relationship. That's just how we are. But you're right, that does. Especially when you get to larger agencies, you have account managers with other departments they may not even have any good communication with. So the larger the agency, the harder it is for that. One person who's communicating with you I'll say this on the client side can control much.
Speaker 1:And so I feel, you know, I feel and have a lot of empathy for account directors, account managers in very large organizations because they have very little control and they really usually I mean they're good people and want to do the right things. But I think you know, doing from that standpoint, but also I feel like in person with your teams is really important a couple of times a year.
Speaker 2:I think it's a huge difference.
Speaker 2:It really does. It really does. Before we jump off this question, I think another point that I keep going back and forth in my head is why. I guess why the question if there's an agency client strain is. I guess my point that I want to make is don't ever force an agency relationship with your team. If it's not a fit, it's not a fit. If you have to question that type of thing, then maybe look at the agency and the team meshing. Maybe it's just not meant for you. And it could be a number of things. It may not be that the agency is doing anything wrong. It just may be the way that they work or the way that they operate just isn't the vibe that you get, and so Right and things change.
Speaker 1:What you need and what that agency provides can change, and that's okay too. So I like the not force popularity. I think the first one I heard that did it was probably Puerto Rico, but it has been really rising in popularity where DMOs are hosting these vendor retreats and getting them in the room and setting some KPIs and setting some goals and basically saying play nice together.
Speaker 2:Right, it's really important. Yeah, I mean, we've seen, I think, a number of times, jen, where a DMO is really loyal, overly loyal, to an agency and ends up losing their entire team or losing other agencies because they didn't produce that space for real collaboration. And produce that space for real collaboration Again, you don't want to jeopardize your core team in your DMO for an agency relationship. It's just not. It's not worth it.
Speaker 1:I love that you mentioned this space for collaboration, because that literally checks off all three questions just now on your board. Space for collaboration on your tools versus your content and graphics. Space for collaboration Like that is you just themed up part?
Speaker 2:one. That's the mantra. That's the mantra of part one.
Speaker 1:That is the mantra of part one. We will be back with part two. We're going to talk websites, and are they even necessary for us? Ooh, stay tuned. With part two, we're going to talk websites, and are they even necessary for us? Oh, stay tuned.
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