BUSINESS & CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT BOARD

WORKSHOP MEETING

March 19, 2008

A Workshop Meeting of the Business & Cultural Development Board was held on March 19, 2008 at the City Hall Annex, 111 Polk Avenue, Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Chairperson Muncey called the meeting to order at 5:37 p.m.

MEMBERS PRESENT OTHERS PRESENT

Mr. Anderson City Planner Todd Peetz

Ms. Marcum Council Member Roberts

Ms. Muncey

Ms. Peppers

Mr. Peterson

ACTION:

Review Draft Marketing Video Script with Communication Concepts, Inc.

Chairperson Muncey welcomed Ashley Babb, Script Writer, and Bryan Foster, Photographer, of CCI.

She presented this was an action item carried over from the February meeting in which the board had been tasked with review and comment of the first draft of the marketing video script. Ms. Muncey referred to the board’s comments with the first draft as noted in the minutes.

Mr. Foster confirmed that CCI produced the City’s first marketing video in 1997. He presented that the first draft was a result of the initial meeting with the city manager. Ms. Babb presented that the direction they had received from the city manager was to create an effective marketing tool that would attract potential residents and businesses into the area with a theme of “Live, Work, and Play”.

The following perspectives were offered by members:

Mr. Anderson: When members viewed the original video, there was general agreement that the video needed to sell the area’s amenities and attractions above and beyond the 1.9 square miles of the City itself. People might reside here temporarily as a tourist or live here if they established a business, but the attraction to come here needed to go beyond the borders of the City.

Mr. Peterson: The video should showcase local activities and the people who would support potential businesses; target audience should be tourists and residents.

Ms. Muncey: The video, under the umbrella of the B&CDB, should be the marketing tool to attract potential businesses.

Ms. Marcum: The video needed to showcase more than the two square miles of the City; it was the City’s location that made it so valuable. The video needed to be balanced as the current population of the City was not enough to attract too many businesses. The City had a huge corridor of tourists/residents coming off the Beach Line; target the potential businesses and also include the tourist and residential population because these were good reasons for potential businesses to locate here.

Mr. Anderson: Businesses looked at the livability of a community - resident and tourist population; people activities; educational facilities; access to a major airport; medical/hospital facilities; cultural activities, shopping center(s), and the space center, in the case of our City. Suggested a video concept descending from Outer Space, down to Florida, down to Central Florida and the Cape and the first visual of the City would be coming over the overpass and ending with the City’s welcome sign. Coming down from Outer Space the video could talk about the regional amenities that would be attractive to the tourists and for businesses to invest, of which some would be the same and some would be quite different. The video could then start talking about the City at the welcome sign. If the video focused only on the City itself, it would be a worthless tool to attract businesses into the City.

Mr. Foster agreed that the focus should not be limited to just the City limits and welcomed the board’s input. He presented with the proximity of Disney, the Port, Cocoa Beach and Melbourne, what did Cape Canaveral have that would attract someone to stay here? Did the City offer tax incentives to businesses?

Ms. Marcum: Recommended the theme be revised to “Work, Live and Play”. The video needed to demonstrate that Cape Canaveral was a great place to do business and once the businesses were here, they would discover that Cape Canaveral was also a great place to live and play. She presented that Cape Canaveral was at the end of the Beach Line with close proximity to the Orlando Airport. At the same time, the founders specifically designed Cape Canaveral to be a residential, beachside community; streets ended at the beach. In addition, Country Inn & Suites and Residence Inn were suite concept hotels geared towards businesses, and the Radisson had convention facilities.

Mr. Anderson: From a business standpoint, this type of video would not be the first type of promotional material that a business would see, but rather it would follow something that initially attracted the attention of a business looking to locate within a city. This type of video could then be used for their prospective and existing employees to demonstrate how happy they would be to both work and live in Cape Canaveral. Businesses, initially, were interested in the following attributes of a community: proximity to the airport, the tax base, quality of infrastructure; quality of the local government; security, parks & recreation, quality of schools, quality and cost of the housing stock, and availability of medical facilities. If the City was trying to bring business into the City with this video, the question would be, what are the attributes of this community that make it a good place to do business AND they are different from the attributes that make it a good place to live, work and play. Mr. Anderson questioned the target audience and what was the City trying to accomplish.

Ms. McIntire reminded that this was the board’s video and the city manager was encouraging members to provide direction to CCI.

Mr. Peterson: What was here for employees of prospective businesses that would make them happy? What kind of activities were there for employees to enjoy when not working? Were there enough people here to support prospective businesses? Video should capture and focus on fishing activities/events, launches, gambling ships. These types of things bring people into the area and people bring in business.

Mr. Anderson: The attractions Mr. Peterson mentioned would not bring in an outside business as an investor; however, after a prospective business had performed their initial screening of the area, then those types of activities become critical.

Ms. Marcum: There were two different elements of business in the City: the larger and more selective businesses in terms of location and the smaller businesses; such as, florists and restaurants. The larger businesses would most likely work with the EDC to ascertain information regarding the area. From what the City has heard, the biggest advantage to locating within Cape Canaveral was the fact that the City was the main corridor between PAFB and the air force base.

Mr. Anderson: If the board presumed this was not a marketing video to attract businesses, but a video to focus on businesses already predisposed to being here, the purpose would be to promote the livability and attributes of the community.

Members discussed the concept of a “marketing light video” to include such things as: interviews with local businesses, corporate and small; doctor and dental offices; restaurant at Cape Caribe.

Council Member Roberts suggested members consider the following for inclusion: branding, historical significance of the City; no City traffic problem; redevelopment opportunities; proximity to KSC; the 400+ vacant condominium units. There was a tremendous need to bring people into the City with purchasing power.

Mr. Anderson: From an economic standpoint with the state of the weakened US dollar, perhaps the City should explore realtor sponsorships to create an international marketing video promoting the City to Europe. This would attract people and business would follow.

Mr. Peetz: Could be cost sharing opportunities with another city; KSC Visitor Center might partner with the City in order to promote tourism.

Workshop revealed there was not a strong, clear consensus of the target audience because the City did not have a broad marketing strategy and had not performed a branding exercise.

Ms. Marcum: Perhaps the money that had been set aside for the video might be better invested in making the City’s website more useful and user friendly to reflect positively on the community; include pictures and maybe snippets of a video.

Mr. Peterson: Need to capitalize on the fact that Cape Canaveral was the center of the space tourism business.

In conclusion, Chairperson Muncey presented that the Board could not reach a consensus. Members needed to do more homework in order for CCI to produce a quality product.

Members thanked Ms. Babb and Mr. Foster for attending the workshop.

There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 6:55 pm.

___________________________

Kim M. McIntire, Secretary