A few weeks ago, there was a bunch of hoopla on the local Florida TV stations about a $40M+ bill passed to help the Florida Tourism Department advertise to the world that our beaches are still pristine and oil-free. In fact, I was enjoying a Bushwacker at AJ's in Destin during the filming of one of the promotional spots... but I guess I didn't look the part of a happy tourist cause they didn't ask me to be in the commercial ;-[
Anyway, it occurred to me (okay, actually it occurred to my friend, but I'll take the credit) that it seems a bit odd to spend a whole bunch of money promoting Florida's pristine and oil-free beaches when, um, they may not BE pristine and oil-free by the time the spots hit the airwaves. In fact, they almost certainly won't be.
And that's exactly what happened. Last week, the oil hit the beaches of the Emerald Coast, and is on its way to the rest of Florida's Gulf coastline. The promotional ads have been pulled, and the advertising money shifted to marketing Florida's other, non-beachy attractions.
Okay, I get it. Tourism is huge here and without it, the Florida economy will suffer. Lots. But, Houston (or more specifically, Tallahassee), we have a problem. We have icky, nasty, stinky OIL off (and now on) our shores. Maybe if we solved the REAL PROBLEM, life could return to normal and the tourists would happily come back. But no, we're spending lots and lots and lots of perfectly good dollars on advertising that perhaps could be better put to use to Save those Beaches the tourists really want to visit.
How is this relevant to real estate? Well, I had the same feeling a few years back when NAR started running all those (presumably expensive) ads (with our money) about how valuable the services of a REALTOR® are. Frankly, the ads sounded defensive to me; as if NAR was trying to counteract the negative perception our industry enjoys from the general public. At the time I wondered if all those dollars might be better spent actually doing something about the REASONS our industry has a bad reputation (and there are plenty) instead of trying to convince people that their perceptions of us were incorrect.
Anyway, I don't have any real point here, except to say, as I've said for years now, that our industry has some serious credibility issues with the general public, many of which are well-deserved. I've written extensively on what these well-deserved credibility issues are, but for now, let me just say that I'd love to see some of our REALTOR dollars spent, not on band-aid advertising, but rather on improving the competence and professionalism of our practitioners.
Rant over.
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