Who should market Lenox?

Selectman John McNinch is right.

During the most recent Lenox Board of Selectmen meeting, he spoke out against the constant stream of marketing proposals filling the agenda at recent meetings.

“This [the board of selectmen] should not be the marketing board of the town,” said Selectman McNinch.

In a town with so many other issues, including a “fiscal cliff” of its own in its aging infrastructure, there are many other topics the board needs to focus on.

The town does need to be marketed; many businesses here live on tourist dollars, but the selectmen are not the group for the job.

But the issue gets even muddier when you consider the current proposal before the board.

Lauri O. Klefos, president and CEO of the Berkshire Visitors Bureau, has presented a plan for an $11,000 marketing plan for the town for 2013.

This plan would focus on the BVB website, where a banner advertising Lenox would be on top of every page of the BVB’s website three months out of the year; the currently proposed months are June, September and November.

Even forgetting the question of why a town needs to pay the BVB, whose sole mission is to promote tourism in the region, the proposal has a fatal flaw.

The website all this advertising links to is the site for the Lenox Chamber of Commerce, not the town’s tourism website (Discoverlenox.com).

Should taxpayer money be used to promote the local chamber?

The answer is simple, no.

The chamber in Lenox is a great group, and they do some amazing work for the businesses in town, but why did we spend all that money to hire a fancy New York City firm if we are not going to even use the product they made for us?

Before the town spends money to promote anyone else’s website they should focus on updating the $56,000 product it already has. For instance, maybe they could change the front page of the Discover Lenox site, which still promotes a car show from June.

The town needs to market itself, but not this way. Not by wasting money by trying one angle only to bail on it and then give taxpayer money to promote another group’s efforts.

Before another great-sounding effort is jumped on and more money is thrown down the drain, let’s step back, take a deep breath and at least figure out the most important question: What are we marketing and who should be doing that job anyway?

Posted by Kameron Z. Spaulding on November 20, 2012. Filed under Editorials,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry