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CVB: We’ll Take Our Dollars Elsewhere

Author: John Hawbaker
Filed Under: Business, Chattanooga Economy
Published: August 15th, 2008

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The Chattanooga Area Convention & Visitors Bureau recently launched ChattanoogaGetaway.com, a new web site aimed at attracting regional travelers. The site features videos of popular tourist attractions and links back to Chattanooga testimonials on the CVB’s main site, ChattanoogaFun.com. So far, so good. After all, the CVB recently announced that tourism brought nearly $700 million to Hamilton County.

The question some are asking is, why aren’t local firms earning the business of promoting Chattanooga?

Chattanooga Getaway was developed by Paramore | Redd, a Nashville-based online marketing firm, and an anonymous source told Chattarati that no Chattanooga-based companies even bid on the project. This is also not the first time the CVB has looked outside the Chattanooga area for this type of work. Their primary site, ChattanoogaFun.com was built by Arkansas firm Aristotle Web Design.

In the grand scheme of things, these projects don’t represent a huge amount of money, but this is fundamentally a public relations issue. Are we sending the message that Chattanooga’s a great town to visit, but lacking in creative and tech talent?

Perhaps this is merely an issue of local firms not understanding how to promote design and technology. However, organizations such as AIGA | Chattanooga and the Chattanooga Technology Council have been working for some time to raise the profile of the “creative class.”

This also relates to the frequent criticism of some city organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce, that they focus too much attention on landing a single big employer and not enough on helping small businesses grow. That focus and determination appears to have paid off with the coming VW plant, but small businesses still provide most of the region’s jobs. Perhaps with “large manufacturing plant at Enterprise South” scratched off the city’s to-do list, we can turn our eyes towards those existing small businesses and their economic impact.

What’s your take?

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Comments
  • there will always be the allure of the "out of town" firm, no matter where you are. although I must say the Chamber has actually done a pretty good job at using local talent for their website, etc, so at least they've set a good example.

    and sometimes honestly you dont WANT this kind of pseudo-govt work, for various reasons.
  • Andrew Stone
    It's a shame that an organization like the CVB can't support the "local guy" in it's efforts to promote the "local area". You can't tell me there's not enough creative talent in the Noog to provide them with what they need... and for a good price, too.
  • CP
    You're preaching to the choir. It's 2008 and chambers of commerce and visitors bureaus no longer have a need to exist in the community. They simply outsource the work that they themselves should be doing. I'm hoping that my generation (Millennials) eventually restructures chambers into for-profit businesses so they can focus on their execution rather than using donated funds to outsource outside of their city.
  • chris
    "No Chattanooga-based companies even bid on the project"--I think that pretty much sums up the problem. I know several locals doing great work for CVB and they've consistently used ,A href="http://www.atomicfilms.com/">Atomic Films for years for commercials. If locals want the work they can go after it.
  • If someone ever walked up to me and told me, in all honesty, that they didn't think Chattanooga had technical or creative talent, I'd have to punch them. It's a small tech/creative community where everyone knows everybody else (by at most 3 degrees), but the talent in the small pool is enormous. We have quality that far exceeds the quality of the quantities bigger cities have to offer.
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