Making magic: Kanab boldly embraces a unique branding campaign.

• Author: Olson, Pamela M.
• Position: Lessons Learned

When potential tourists go online to hunt for a travel destination, they search for the activity first and the location second, a fact presented by Roger Brooks of Destination Development International at a session on "How to Market a Community." For example, most people would search for "birdwatching" then "Galapagos," or "skiing" and then "Utah." What is important about this is that if a community or a destination hasn't ever connected to an activity in the mind of the consumer, that search will never happen. And if a community stubbornly hangs onto a false identity of itself that doesn't align with reality, it will remain invisible to visitors.

This was part of a lesson learned for Ken Gotzen-Berg, director of the Kane County/Southern Utah Office of Tourism, through the process of figuring out why the community of Kanab was in a tourism slump. Working with the Office of Tourism board, Gotzen-Berg sought professional help to identify and communicate Kanab's true identity. Here he shares a bit of what made the rebranding a success.

Know Who You Are

Gotzen-Berg says Kanab suffered from an "identity crisis" for years, which made tourists ignore the area as a destination, "even though we are perfectly located right in the middle of three national parks, five national monuments, two national forests, and other spectacular scenery," he says. They needed to communicate to travelers that Kanab was key to that outdoor experience.

"We wanted to capture those travelers and influence them to stay here, spend their tourism dollars here, create jobs here. We needed to make the argument that Kanab makes a perfect 'base-camp' for visitors," he says.

Be Authentic

One common marketing mistake communities make, says Brooks, is that they all try to have "something for everyone" or be the "gateway" to someplace else, both of which are vague and boring concepts. Most Utahns and visitors to the state had a nostalgic reminiscence of Kanab as an Old West movie mecca, but that campaign was an empty well.

"Our past branding efforts had focused too heavily on our past movie history," Gotzen-Berg says, even though Kanab had earned the nickname "Little Hollywood" for the more than 200 movies, TV episodes and commercials that have been filmed in the area. "We simply could not continue to back that up, when locations like Moab and Monument Valley have been making more movies recently."

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