A decade ago — at the end of November 2009, to be more precise — I stopped by the Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center and picked up several copies of a beautiful, new glossy magazine that had just hit the the streets: the Pagosa Springs Official Visitor Guide, Winter Edition.
My friend Glenn Walsh had picked up several copies of the new magazine at the Visitors Center — he was headed to New York for a few days and thought he might leave the copies here and there, where New Yorkers might pick them up and learn something about Pagosa Springs… before winter was over. It was almost December already; a ‘Winter Edition’ probably should have hit the streets a bit earlier in the year?
…If we were trying to reach people who weren’t already living here…?
But this was 2009. Pagosa was only just learning how to market itself as a tourist resort.
On the cover of the magazine was a really gorgeous photo by Pagosa Springs SUN photographer Mike Pierce — though I didn’t recognize the particular location. Nor did I recognize the location of the inside cover photo showing local tourism promoter Norm Vance on his snowmobile.
I thought to myself, ‘Maybe I need to get out more often? I don’t seem to recognize my own community…’
After spending over $1 million of our Lodgers Tax dollars trying to figure out the best way to increase tourism in Archuleta County, the Town Tourism Committee had still not come up with a truly exciting “branding” idea.
I believe it was right around 2009 that Denver-based marketing firm Barnhart USA — with able assistance from the Town Tourism Committee — finally rolled out a refreshingly authentic branding motto:
“Refreshingly Authentic.”
The visual presentation, of what “Refreshingly Authentic” supposedly meant, was portrayed on the inside cover of the new magazine. It showed Norm Vance dressed in jeans and a plaid jacket, standing atop a snowmobile, well-lit by professionally-placed photography lights.
The copy read: “You’ll find miles of the best cross country trails in Colorado, thanks to a guy who doesn’t even ski.” In fact, Norm Vance had been grooming cross country trails around Pagosa, on a volunteer basis, for more years than I could remember.
The text continued: “Few towns in Colorado have as much character, or characters, as ours.”
Well, shoot me for having an English teacher for a father, but that’s bad grammar. The sentence should have read: “Few towns in Colorado have as much character, or as many characters, as ours.” But perhaps the experts at Barnhart were trying to write in a colorful, homey style… like the way our Pagosa characters talk?
Like, uneducated?
Ten years later, our tourism marketing campaigns still feature the branding we were unsatisfied with back in 2009. “Refreshingly Authentic.”
Flipping quickly through the Guide and glancing at the various editorial photographs, I noticed right away a large number of photos without any human residences or businesses included in the frame. Of the 58 editorial photos I counted, only five showed an interior or exterior of any recognizable Pagosa home or business, and three of those five were historical photos from the early 1900s.
So, in other words, only two photos out of 58 in the magazine portrayed recognizable, existing (and presumably authentic) buildings. Obviously, the editorial content — written and photographed by the Pagosa Springs SUN staff — was not trying to sell the attractiveness of our local homes or commercial buildings.
The majority of the magazine was paid advertising. But even there, I saw surprisingly few recognizable buildings. Even some of the real estate companies featured mainly photos devoid of buildings. I guess, if you were selling real estate in Pagosa in 2009, what you were really selling was a place to sleep in between various outdoor activities.
I was a little surprised by the center Map Section — which was funded by the Town Tourism Committee using Lodgers Tax revenues. It included seven maps showing various recreational areas, but not a single map showing our business districts.
All of this validated for me what I already understood about Pagosa Springs in 2009 — that visitors didn’t come to Pagosa for any kind of cultural experience, or a unique shopping experience, or because they want to spend a lot of time inside buildings. They were coming for the ‘out-of-doors’.
When the inaugural edition of the Official Pagosa Springs Visitor Guide had first arrived, six months earlier, the Town Tourism Committee was ecstatic about having a magazine as ‘classy’ as the magazine published by, for example, the Telluride Tourism Board. Some Committee members suggested that our new guide was more attractive than the Telluride magazine.
That made me curious about Telluride. I’ve never been to Telluride, but I hear you can’t buy property there unless you’re a millionaire. Thank goodness Pagosa hasn’t fallen that far… yet.
I checked out the lodging for Telluride, and found out (via a random sampling of hotels and inns) that the average price for a room in December 2009 was $156 a night. The average price for a room in Pagosa Springs was $81.
A nice steak dinner in Pagosa? Average price: $21.
Average price in Telluride: $32.
Which meant that, in 2009, it would presumably take longer for our local businesses to pay off their advertising bill for a glossy ad in the Visitor Guide… compared with Telluride advertisers.
But that’s why we live here, right? Because it’s not a community built upon corporate wealth. Right?
Or am I wrong?
Following this week’s 4-3 vote by the Pagosa Springs Town Council — defining the vacant parcel adjacent to the Springs Resort as “blighted” and possibly in need of up to $79 million in “urban renewal” tax incentives, with the funding to be siphoned from future taxes due to all of our local taxing entities — one of our Daily Post readers wrote to suggest a revision to the marketing brand developed by Barnhart USA back in 2009:
“Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Refreshingly Blighted.”