Convention and Visitors Advisory - Regular Meeting

All right, any public comments and announcements? Hearing none, we'll move to 4-1, discussion of possible action to recommend to city council to allow the city manager to enter into a contract negotiations with the highest ranked firm for the agency of record for professional services for the Mexico market for account strategy and creative services, media buy-in placement, meetings and groups, PR and media relations. Revisit South Potter Allen RFP number AROMEX-2606. Because how this started, as you all may recall, the marketing department would like to have an agency specifically focused on the Mexican market. And jump in, Cindy. They budgeted $400,000 for this agency.

It was 600,000.

Excuse me, 600,000. Is that including the fees, Cindy?

No. So, hi. Cindy Trevino, Chief Marketing Officer. So, we went out for RFP, and they have a budget of $600,000 for media placement, and their fee, their agency fee, is $120,000 with no commissions or anything like that.

Right, up to, is that how I read that? Correct, up to 120,000. Yeah, so no more than that. And Cindy released the RFP. She received three proposals back. All of those are included in your packet. We scored them with a little subcommittee, went through it. The agency that was selected, by the subcommittee as a whole is Black Coy.

Correct.

And we've done some work with them in the past. Cindy felt comfortable with that, which is nice to hear. Yes. And Cindy, if you have anything you would like to say, go ahead and tell us, or we can just ask you some questions, I guess, on that.

Not a problem. Yes, so we went out for release on August the 8th, and we received three proposals. One was Black Coy, one was Mazdi, one was Chamoy. Then we met as a committee on August 26, which included Bella, Sean, Edmundo, Kelly, and I. We reviewed the packages, and it looks like Black Koi was the one that we went with. Black Koi is a company that they actually do a lot of our graphics. Every time we need something for a billboard, a publication. Black Quay is a company that we would use for graphics, but they do have a company, they have an office in Mexico and they have an office in San Antonio. So I've known this agency since I worked with the city of McAllen because they still work with the city of McAllen for the McAllen Airport. They help out with a convention center over there. They help out Welcome Home RGB. too, so I believe Spikes Ford is another one. So they have several clients. They do know the sports industry too. They've helped out with Major League Baseball over there in Mexico as well. They wouldn't be subcontracting anybody. They would do all these media placements directly, which is really good for us because There's no middleman, they do it directly. So they would handle marketing buys in Monterey, San Pedro, Mexico City, help us out with our initiatives with our sister city. They would do all digital, programmatic, out of home, social media, work with influencers, help with our website, our Spanish page as well. And then also for sales, they would help us out in getting our sales department involved with events or trade events over there in Mexico too. Publications, help with creative as far as the copies. So whatever Greenhouse creates for our marketing buys, it's not just going to be translated into Spanish. They're going to make sure that it speaks to the Mexico audience. So they're going to be working with that as well. And that's all I have to say for Black Boy.

Cindy, why is it to be fully classified as an agency of record for there? I mean, obviously they've been doing some work for us. What's the benefit to you to actually have an agency of record?

Well, because they're located in Mexico, I feel like they would know exactly where to go and where to be. Even in transportation, the airports over there, billboards that I don't see other than a company just telling me, oh, this is a good location, but I don't really know. I'm not in Mexico. So I feel like they have a better knowledge of the best places to be to target the Monterey visitors and, like I said, the airport as well. So we would always spend about close to $400,000 in Mexico. So this is just really an additional $200,000 more. But now we have an agency that knows exactly where to be.

I noticed that they are a relatively small agency, I think. billing like 310 a year or something like that. So this essentially almost triples the size of their business. Do you feel like that they can handle that?

Yes, absolutely.

Yes. How has their relationship been or what would be their relationship with Greenhouse?

They would work hand-in-hand, especially with Creative, just to make sure that we're always on brand, that we keep Texas' best beach, that we use that in our marketing over there as well, and keep the island as well campaign, so that way it goes hand-in-hand. So they will meet with Greenhouse and my team as well, and that way we can always be sure that everything is running smoothly and, like I said, on brand.

Will they also be recommending initiatives specifically for Mexico?

Yes, yes.

Any other questions? Well, I'm encouraged, and I know that if this passes here today, Legal's gonna give us an opportunity, Cindy, to get out of this agreement if she's not satisfied. And this is a one-year contract?

Correct, one year.

Okay, well, after you all negotiate it. I know this is the next step, so we'll go into negotiations. Okay. Ryan, Luis, Bella, anything? Bella's been well-informed. She was on the subcommittee. Okay.

I think it's long overdue on something like this, and I trust you all. I mean, you've vetted them. You all have checked everything out, and I think that You know, a long time ago when we had an ad agency at Machete, they actually had a representative that would actually go and do sales and stuff over there at the market in Monterey. And once we stopped doing some of that advertising, we started losing a little bit. I think we took them for granted as far as Mexican nationals that were coming from Monterey. And there was a lot of different other things that happened at the same time. But I think that we're starting to get a little bit more We're starting to get a lot of Mexican nationals coming back, and I think this is a great time and a great opportunity for us. So thank you.

Since this is a different country we're dealing with here, will we be looking at any kind of different performance, key performance indicators specifically for these folks out of Mexico?

They're also going to be, as far as data goes and all of that, is that what you're asking me? Okay, yes. So they're going to be presenting monthly as well or quarterly to let us know where we stand, and they're also going to be working with tourism economics as well.

I'm excited to see that difference. I'd like to know specifically what Mexico is doing for us and how it's responding.

Okay, perfect.

One other thing, if we're seeing... Are they pretty flexible in what they're going to be advertising as far as locations in Mexico? I mean, I know Monterey, you know, that area is going to be huge, but, like... the Reynosa area, if we see a little bit of a change, will it be able to be flexible based on the data, like hey, let's move a little bit of dollars here during the year?

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And these are the cities that we provided on the RFP as well, so that's why they named those specific cities. But yes, they are flexible. If they see something that's going on in another city and that would benefit us, then absolutely.

Okay.

All right, I'll call for a motion.

Second.

Oh, I'm calling for one.

I'll make a motion to, how do I say it? Tell me the wording.

To submit to the city manager's office for contract negotiations with Black Coy. I guess I would say it like that.

I make a motion for that.

Okay. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Now we're in discussion. Anything else you guys want to talk about? Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Cindy. Good luck with that team. Thank you. And I know we'll hear back probably. If the contract's approved anyway, they'll begin the fiscal year October 1. Okay. And I don't know how much time you're going to give them. I suppose maybe 90 days or something. You'll come back and let us know how it's going. All right, very good. We'll move to 4.2, discussion of possible action to recommend to city council to authorize the city manager to renegotiate the contract agreement with Greenhouse. Visit South Potter Islands, agency of record. As you all know, Kelly and Cindy has renegotiated our arrangement with Greenhouse. They've highlighted... those changes in there, and Cindy, I'm sure, can break it down. As we've been discussing the last several months, we've continued to bring more of our marketing efforts, what we would call in-house, to allow Cindy's team and her vendors of choice to take care of some of these items.

Yes, we were able to remove the commission, so we are no longer going to pay the 12.5% commissions that we were doing in the past. So we're super happy to see that and go on. So whenever we say we're going to have media placement for 1.9 and 1.6, It's that amount. It's not net or anything like that. So we were happy to do that. Also, so that for production, in the past they had $200,000. We're giving them $100,000 with this contract. FAM tours, so this is when they bring riders to the island. So we have them at $25,000 for FAM tours. Their net budget for media placement is 1.675 million. And then for contingency, 125,000. So the total marketing budget is 1.9. But for their agency fee annually, they're going to get 780,000, which is 65,000 a month. But other than that, we still have in this new contract that if something's not working out, we can back out in 60 days as long as it's in writing as well.

Cindy, what's given you and the team the comfort that you can move forward with limiting their contract? What is it that's different now?

One, the marketing agency in Mexico too, we gave a little bit more money to them. I feel like we're gonna, in the marketing department, we're gonna be hiring two more people, and one is, Denise is now public relation and brand manager. And I was hoping to announce that another time, but that's the role she's gonna be taking. And so we're gonna be hiring someone specifically just for social media. And so Greenhouse used to manage the organic as well. and paid and right now they're just handling the paid. We're gonna take on all the organic in house. So that's another thing too. So my goal eventually is to take it all in house. Of course I need a bigger team. Until I get that bigger team, then maybe we won't have to do this as often. But right now, we still need the support. But I do want to take in a little bit more in-house so we don't have to. It helps us save money as well.

That's excellent to hear, and I'm glad to hear that we're moving in that direction more and more. It's one of the keys to doing that, of course, is making sure that we have the data that we need in order to move forward in appropriate manners. And so I appreciate the data that we're getting from the other Cindy right now. Yes. And continue to look forward to that.

Yes, and we'll still continue with tourism economics as well.

Cindy, for how long have we had greenhouse?

This is the third year.

The third. And at some point, did we ever look at a different agency? Can I like to compare around or?

After, I mean, so this is a three-year contract. So if we decide, again, after, say, next year, and didn't work out, and we decide to let them know within 60 days, then we would have to go out for RFP again. Okay.

Yep. All right. Thank you.

Anything from anybody else? Okay, I was really happy to see the work that you and Kelly did on this, and I'm very pleased with Greenhouse that they were open to renegotiating this contract in year three, or yeah, now we're entering year three with them. Well done in that regard. Sounds like you've really trimmed it up here. Okay, so in that case, I'll make a motion to recommend to city council to authorize the city manager to renegotiate the contract agreement with Greenhouse. Yeah, please, go ahead. Well, I did, but it's okay.

Please, I would very much like to hear. I'll second it, so we can have discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Patel.

Thank you for everything you guys do. We met with Cindy and Kelly a few weeks ago, I think, and went through the whole marketing program. Thank you very much for sharing that with us. I took all that back and First of all, I'm really happy that we're finally thinking of bringing this in-house. We've been talking about this for years. I think, Sean, you know this from way back. That's always been my case that, man, we can do this. We can, $700,000, we can hire two people at 100 grand each and knock this thing out very well. So anyway, I brought all that back and fed it into Claude and chat GPT to see how can I save the $768,000 in fees to bring it, to do it myself. You'll be amazed what it spit out and how I should go about it. Metrics, what you mentioned, Tom, we need the metrics. And that's part of it. That's the next question we'll ask you. Do you need help with metrics? And so I said, yes. Where to get the metrics? So anyway, in a nutshell, what I'd like to suggest, part of that motion is that the city, the CVB starts looking into how we can place all the things they're placing if this was an in-house thing. and you dedicate one person at the CVB and say, look, just think that you're doing all this. We don't have greenhouse. You got to do all this placement. How would you go about doing it? And can you even do this? And if they say, yeah, in a year's time. So this would be a good training exercise. before you cut off ties with a full-service ad agency. I think it's a good exercise in getting us to a place where we can save the 700 grand, but some of it will be offset by hiring somebody in-house. My budget would be about $150,000 to $175,000 for two people and put them to work. You might want to start that now. so that they can start cutting this up into pieces and see if they can do that placement themselves in-house, and you'll be surprised. You'll be surprised in a year's time where you'll be. So anyway, that's just a suggestion that you might wanna start that process now. We may not implement in next year, but we're on that path.

Thank you, Mr. Patel, I concur. We're still in discussion. Anything else for Cindy or?

Likewise, I concur as well. I think that it continues to be prudent, and you mentioned as well looking to hire additional people, but yes, those job descriptions, as was described there, would be to eventually continue to bring more of it in with some of the opportunities there as this continues to transition. Correct. Some good forward thinking. Thank you.

And I think, as Mr. Patel mentioned, it's something that's been discussed, I think, as far back as you were on the CVB. The difference now is that you can also get somebody that doesn't have to necessarily move to the island to get it done as well. I mean, they need to know the island and the area, but they can work away somewhere else on it. So I think it's more realistic to start moving in that direction or the opportunity to. Yeah.

Fair point. Anything else? Okay, there's a motion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Cindy. Enjoy contract negotiations. It's always a lot of fun. This meeting is adjourned.