Mike Maloney is the interim director of the Eureka Springs City Advertising and Promotion Commission, but that’s not stopping him from laying down the groundwork for what he hopes is another lengthy, positive tenure leading the marketing and promotional efforts of the city.

“That’s why I came here,” Maloney said of his intentions to again become the permanent director. “I’m looking forward to the challenge.”

Maloney was hired as the CAPC’s interim director in late October and returned to the position he held from 2011 until April 2019. His familiarity with the city and many stakeholders has enabled him to hit the ground running in the two months he’s been back, he said.

“If you drove around in 2019 and took a look at the buildings and signs and then drove around today you’d see new signs … lots of new restaurants and shops, people and faces,” Maloney said. “The composition of the city has changed a bit, all for the better. I think one thing for me, what’s changed within the CAPC is the ways that we are able to work with our stakeholders, the tax collectors, in terms of how we communicate with them.

“… I think another thing that is tremendous for us today is that we have seven commissioners on board. We did not have seven when I got here, we had four, and we built that up in a very short period of time. It’s a tremendous, tremendous commission. These are great people … they’re enthusiastic, they have wisdom and I think a really great direction they want the city to go into with its advertising, marketing and promotions.”

Maloney said he left the CAPC in April 2019 with plans to retire, giving a fourmonth notice of his intentions.

“Everything was in really tremendously good shape,” he said of the status of CAPC when he departed. “I was very happy. It’s one of those situations where, if you leave, you want to leave with everything being good. And it was and I went into what I wanted to do, go back into my full-time voiceover recording business. I’ve been behind a microphone ever since I graduated from college and really wanted to go back into that business on a full-time basis.”

Those plans didn’t last long.

Maloney soon got a call from the advertising and promotion commission in Lowell asking him to come help that commission “get its feet on the ground,” and he soon became its director. A

WHAT WE DO? couple of years later Bella Vista’s commission came calling and Maloney assisted them on a contract basis, primarily with digital marketing, he said.

“While doing all of that I did about a dozen books for audible. com and a couple of hundred different voiceover jobs. I’ve just been busy ever since I left [Eureka Springs].

“So, when I was asked to consider coming back, I was busy at the time. But, I really love Eureka and took a hard look at it and said, ‘yeah, I’d be interested in looking at the job once again.’ ” Since he’s been back, the response around the community has been a warm one, Maloney said.

“It’s been very good,” he said. “The thing that has been rather exciting for me is just an extreme amount of optimism that I get not only within the corridors of the CAPC … but what I have garnered and received from the general public. It’s been a very gracious ‘thank you for returning’ and ‘we’re glad you’re back’ and ‘good to see you again.’ Many have said they hope we can get the CAPC back on the road where it was one time before.

“That, for me, has been very gratifying.”

COMMUNICATION

Maintaining a strong partnership with stakeholders in the community is important for the CAPC staff, Maloney said.

“We have a small staff right now, but I’ve seen this small staff move some pretty good mountains in a short period of time,” he said. “They are able to connect with people.”

Regularly held small group breakfast meetings with stakeholders along with monthly seminars aimed at helping all kinds of businesses learn “better methods of hospitality” and best practices are also on the horizon, Maloney said.

“The CAPC has a lot to do and part of that is education,” he said. “We want to be able to take the reins and move forward pretty aggressively in 2024.”

Having the CAPC offices located in The Auditorium is helpful in meshing with tax collectors, Maloney said.

“When I came back the CAPC had moved its offices into The Auditorium downtown and I really like that,” he said. “I like that connectedness to sort of the heart of the city. We’re a pretty friendly bunch of people, and we enjoy people coming in and visiting with us, telling us what’s going on out on the street. … We feel like we’re closer to the people in town.”

NEW AGENCY

The new year also began a partnership between the CAPC and Madden Media, a Tucson, Ariz.-based company that has regional offices and staff sprinkled throughout the country. Two of the main contacts for the CAPC live in nearby Berryville and Ozark, Mo.

“I like their methodology,” Maloney said of Madden. “We’ve had some good conversations with them. I sat in on the agency presentations back when everybody came to The Auditorium and you could kind of feel a tremendous amount of excitement from the Madden team. They are, I think, extremely drilled into DMOs, Direct Marketing Organizations, which basically are tourism cities. … Our connectedness to them is really, really good. They’ve got a lot of energy and a lot of solid ideas.

“Typically, agencies are capable of garnering a lot of intel and these guys are superior at it. Intel kind of leads the way when we’re trying to match performance and creative together. I just think they’ve got the right combination for us.”

GOALS

The CAPC recently approved growing the budget from $2.3 million in 2023 to $2.4 million for 2024. How the commission reaches that goal is always important, Maloney said.

“One of the things that we looked at was just how we are going to handle the ability to bring in more people to town. That’s the mission of the organization,” he said. “When we look at all the demographics, all the generalizations, rationalizations of generational components, we were trying to look from top to bottom to say, we’ve got baby boomers and we’ve got Gen Z’s and we have everybody in between. How are we going to mesh up our creative and our messaging to these people? That’s one big component unto itself.”

Long-term, Maloney feels putting efforts toward bringing back group sales is important.

“That’s really super important,” he said of group sales. “I’m not sure where that went. I think we have a product in Eureka Springs that appeals to people from all over the world, literally from Asia to the United Kingdom, parts of Europe, countries on either side of the equator. We have something that I think appeals to people and there are ways you reach those people.”

“… Group sales is a big component and it’s something you don’t have to spend lots of money on. It’s something you should spend money on to bring big groups of people into the community.”

Short-term goals include getting 2024 off to a strong start and utilizing The Auditorium more, Maloney said.

“Short-term goals basically are to get our engines revved up to move through the first quarter of the year,” he said. “We’ve got programming going on the middle of this month in conjunction with the Ozark Mountain Music Festival and we’re going to push into February and March, with some additional shows in The Aud. We are working with promoters, short-term and long-term, to bring well-talented acts into The Auditorium.

“We’re trying to make The Auditorium really a performance venue that is better than it’s been maybe in a long, long time. I think the ability for us to be in The Auditorium and see it every day kind of makes us feel closer to the fact that we’ve got a great product and a great facility and we want the public to be able to utilize it and come to it.”