Convention and Visitor’s Bureau Board members meet on Oct. 15 for their regular monthly meeting to discuss updates within the community and future marketing plans.
The Brown County Convention and Visitors Bureau board met Oct. 15 to discuss upcoming additions to the county including a potential storage barn behind the Brown County Music Center, new painted lines on the highway in front of the music center, trick-or-treating — Squash-the-Block on Halloween — Christmas lights in downtown Nashville closer to the holiday season and more.
Restriping near the music center alone is set to take around $40,000 out of the budget, according to board Vice President Bruce Gould. “You think just painting a couple stripes is nothing,” Gould said. “By the time we pay out all this money we are still looking to end up at the end of the year with about $347,000 left with to distribute so that’s more than last year by about $80,000, so we’re still doing very well financially.
“The state tells you how it has to be striped to get into the entrance and everything has to be done according to their specs,” he said. “They provide us all the engineering and everything but we are required to do it their way. We thought we had done it their way, but they came back and wanted us to redo some things there so we are paying to restripe the highway (by the entrance to the Music Center).”
Board President Brian Tadlock then reviewed recent marketing reports for the county from 360 Group.
“The top performing ad groups for both demos continues to be weddings … in the website traffic as reported by Browncounty.com, you can see that there were 45,000 total web sessions with 36,000 total users,” Tadlock read from the August monthly marketing report.
He explained that in September and October, they do not list overnight stay advertisements online and rely solely on search engine marketing, making August the last month before November targeting “heads in beds”.
The board is focusing on expanding marketing efforts to engage larger nearby markets such as Louisville and Cincinnati, but is considering testing out areas within Indiana such as Fort Wayne. They are also considering testing other types of targeted advertisements in place of weddings, however, the decision will not be made until they speak with the marketing team.
At the last roundtable meeting,$5,000 was allocated to the town attorney Wanda Jones in order to actively work on a new contract between the CVB and Convention and Visitors Commission (CVC), according to Tadlock.
He also went over what he considers to be the three top priorities, looking at the results of the surveys and conversations at previous roundtable discussions — strengthening the staff and resources at the visitors center, strategic support for local businesses and enhancing advertising strategies. Tadlock said that those would be short-term goals that the board can work on for the time being.
The board is currently looking at hiring an executive director and are interviewing three potential candidates, “I think it’s important to have someone in place in order to have a buy-in for that vision (long term).”
The 360 Group will be joining the CVB board at their next monthly meeting scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 19 at Cornerstone Inn’s Conference Room to finalize 2025 advertising spending and discuss marketing efforts going forward.
