April 5, 2007
MCLA Marketing Committee
Lawson’s Station
Hopland, CA

The meeting was called to order at 11:05 AM by the Chairman, Richard Strom. Present were Rich, Kathy, Jeff, Josie, Jim Lawson, Mike, Scott, Kevin, Steven, Jo, Jitu, Dushyant, Jan, Jim Lodder and Tony Shaw.

Approval of Minutes of Last Meeting: Jeff Stanford made a motion to approve the minutes from the last marketing meeting. Josie Perla seconded the motion. It was unanimously approved.

Administrator’s Report:
The Eco-Tourism conference is developing a logo and three were presented to the marketing committee. It was agreed by all present that Eco-Tourism needed to stand out – either by shadowing or making the lettering bolder. The middle logo is the one all agreed on.

The Arts Council has accepted the MCLA proposal which we sent them after our last meeting. We have sent them their first check of $800. Anna will come in May and give the MCLA board an update.

PR: Mark with Hype House has drafted guidelines for us to use whenever media is hosted by lodging. If approved, these procedures, entitled PR101, will go in our next newsletter, on our list server and our website as soon as possible. Mark would also like to do a meeting on PR at our next annual meeting in September.

Steven made a motion to approve the PR101 procedures and add, “you are representing the County.” Jeff seconded the motion. It was unanimously approved.

The MWWC is working on their budget for the next year. Steven made a motion for a letter to be sent to MWWC asking them to consider using Hype House and Ozone for their PR/Advertising for the sake of consistency of branding. Jeff seconded the motion. It was unanimously approved. Scott to write letter.

CTIA – California Tourism Industry Association just had a large convention which we missed. Scott recommended that we join the association for approximately
$725 per year. After discussion, we felt more information was needed. Scott will email the marketing committee a link to their website.

.Scott is working on developing a photo library for MCLA. This would ultimately include a couple of disks and photos. Jeff recommended that our next budget have monies available for photographs.

Scott is working on putting together a Marketing/Sales Retreat in May 2007. He will get us information as soon as he can on this.

Joint Marketing Committee: The first meeting of the Joint Marketing Committee was held in Anderson Valley in March. This committee is made up of two members of MWWC, MCPA and MCLA and the administrators of these organizations. A recap of this meeting was:

Festivals:
• What do we want?
• Needs to have traceable results.
• Provide “cabinet Cards” 6 months in advance to send out with confirmations.
• 3 year business plan must be developed.
• Must be REALLY county wide festival.
• We need to come up with a entirely new concept.
• Should do one big festival – President’s Day Weekend thru 1st weekend in April.
• Work with Napa on collaboration with Mustard Festival
• Hire group to develop and coordinate festival
• Hire part time year-round coordinator to assist all groups with events/festivals

Trade Booth:
The Joint Marketing Committee recommended buying a booth for each of the three organizations to use. Each organization would contribute $2500.00 to the cost of the booth.

Jan made a motion to allocate $2500 maximum for booth purchase and development contingent upon approval by MCPA and MWWC of like allocation. Steven seconded the motion. It was unanimously approved.

Update on Sonoma County Airport & Horizon Air:
Airport asking Mendocino County what we want. We can use Horizon Air for free for media from LA & Seattle to Santa Rosa.
Travel Agent our of Petaluma is able to get lower prices on flights, might be good for packages for our guests.
Scott would like to approach Horizon Air and give flight attendants free rooms.
Advertising inIn-flight Magazine on Horizon Air?
Scott will include update and information on Horizon Air on list server and newsletter.

Old Business:
Wine Event June 22,23,2007. Make sure all Inns, etc in Mendocino are part of the events. There will be two media tours – one in Hopland and one on the coast.

Interim Fulfillment Piece: An interim fulfillment piece from Ozone was passed around. It was agreed that it was too big and bulky. The cost thus far on this interim piece is $2562.00.

We agreed a booklet was better than a flyer. We want a 16 page piece to be developed by our next meeting. Not to exceed $5000 total for creative.

Discussion arose whether we could use the county travel planner that was created by MCPA a few years ago. Kevin volunteered to look into this travel planner, try to get a few copies and distribute it to the marketing committee. This is tabled until further notice.

GoMendo.com redesign update:
3rd design phase. Redesign is going very well and is on schedule. Easy part has been done, now it is harder part of populating website. July 1, 2007 is dealine.

New Business:
Partnership Requests: The Film Festival requested $10,000 to help promote the
Their festival. We cannot fund this year. Scott will address a letter to them asking them to send us a request again next year and this year we will assist them with promotion and PR and lodging, if necessary. The letter is to also state that if they do a county wide festival, we would be able to consider their future requests for partnership.
Claire Ammano – we are working on gomendo.com to accomplish the same goals as the :Legacy” website. We would love her help to populate gomendo.com. Contact Arts Council about talking with Claire about this prospect.


Mendocino.com: First, have Tony Shaw put in contract that gomendo.com is the “official” website of Mendocino County. Richard would like a sub-committee to discuss Mendocino.com and how to handle them. Rich, Jo and Kevin volunteered. They will develop a strategy.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:07 pm.