The Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau will rebrand itself, with a new name and logo as possibilities by year-end.
The goal is to be “the destination marketing organization of the future,” according to President Jay Burress, who said the organization has whittled an internal list of marketing and branding agencies from 15 to four and will choose one by the end of the month to handle the rebranding.
Burress declined to name the agencies in the running for the account, but said some OC-based shops made the short list.
A new look and marketing plan is expected to be in place by the end of the year, Burress said.
The rebranding will come against a backdrop of a reorganization that has included two new hires and a high-level promotion under Burress, who took the top post at the bureau at the start of last year. His upper management team now includes:
• Mindy Abel, senior vice president of strategy and development, who oversaw sales before shifting to her newly created post.
• Junior Tauvaa, senior vice president of convention sales and meeting solutions, who joined the bureau from Meeting Professionals International.
• Charles Harris, senior vice president of marketing, the most recent arrival, who joined the organization from Luxe Hotels in Los Angeles in April.
All three report to Burress.
Harris said the reorganization is nearly complete, though spots remain open for a social media coordinator and a communications staffer.
Burress and Harris said the moves to reorganize internal operations and rework external relations align with current trends in destination marketing.
Awareness
It also seeks broader awareness for the bureau.
“Many people don’t know we’re the largest [destination marketing organization] on the West Coast,” Harris said.
Other groups are taking similar steps.
Visit Laguna Beach was a new brand for the group formerly known as the Laguna Beach Visitors and Conference Bureau.
The organization had a chief executive until a recent change in structure, when it named Ashley Johnson its top staffer, with duties as director of brand marketing and communications.
Visit OC, which represents many hotels, restaurants and other travel-related businesses outside Anaheim, has ramped up efforts at promotion domestically and overseas. The organization has also begun coordinating its efforts with the Anaheim bureau in the past year or so.
“Adapt and Align”
The Anaheim bureau will aim to appeal to a broad set of interests as it retools.
Local partners anxious to see big bookings come to OC include government agencies, hotels and restaurants. The group also has the job of attracting visitors in batches ranging from business travelers coming for trade shows to tourists bound for Disneyland or the beaches.
“We have to adapt and align and use all our resources,” Burress said.
The bureau realigned its external sales force in several key cities, including Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
Prospects
In the past, salespeople would gather prospects, then “hand them off to Anaheim to close the deal.”
Now salespeople in offices around the country follow prospects all the way through.
“We’ve positioned them to be closers,” Burress said. “It’s one salesperson, start to finish, and now we can redeploy the staff here to other tasks and expand our reach.”
Meanwhile, an initiative on the tourism side directly markets to consumers on behalf of local travel and tour operators, who then book the business.
“In those key international and domestic markets, we can move the needle that much more,” he said.
“Destination Architecture”
Burress said some of the bureau’s forward thinking is in “destination architecture”—how a destination marketing organization contributes to the look and feel of the places it promotes.
He said Abel’s new duties call for her to work with hotel, restaurant and other developers to help choose the best parcels for their projects.
The idea is to bring the right mix of businesses to the right sites by, for instance, minimal overlapping of similar offerings, he said. n
