The Eureka Springs City Advertising and Promotion Commission gave a vote of support for the work done by Madden Media in 2024 and unanimously approved increasing its budget with the agency by nearly $300,000 for 2025.
At its regular monthly meeting held Thursday, Dec. 19, the commission approved Madden’s proposal, which includes increases in paid, digital and print media, and for a new website host.
“Right now the format for our website is in a program called Cornerstone, and we’re finding that that is kind of a proprietary type of software program,” CAPC executive director Mike Maloney told commissioners. “We’re having some trouble internally working on it, but we’re going to switch over to all Word- Press. That way … whoever works for us will be able to go out, navigate through the WordPress software, be able to make changes on the fly much more easy, and it’s just a more user-friendly type of approach for us.
“However, that time period of doing that is about six months, so it’s a lot of intense work to go back through a very, very deep website. The thing about our website right now, it’s a very large website. It is labor-intensive because it has a heavy website. There’s a lot of data in it. The pictorial, all the verbiage and so forth add up to lots of pixels, if you will, and we’d like to speed that process up, making it faster to get into, easier to navigate, and then again, more opportunity to move on the fly within the system itself.”
Other changes for 2025 presented to commissioners include increased media presence, both paid and owned, including a focus on regional and group tours and e-mail marketing for events.
“We’re going to be looking at adding more foundational and regional group tourist support,” Maloney said. “We know that our group work now is rising up very quickly. It’s becoming such a factor for us that it’s literally full time all the time. And this is a good thing.
“We have asked to engage in a more substantial and more more robust email marketing campaign. We have a very limited grasp, I think if you will, on our email marketing. But working through Madden will open up that door to more opportunities to go ahead to segregate our emails out, get specific demographics in a better way, really be able to take
a look and even what our products are, how to measure and tactically get those out to the right people at the right time. We can’t just blast them out all over the place, but we have to do it strategically.”
In breaking down how the money going to Madden will be spent, Maloney said he realizes some in the community ask why all the work can’t be done locally.
“There are those who would argue, ‘gosh, why don’t you do all this stuff locally?’,” Maloney said. “There’s no way. There just is not. It takes a superior, dedicated staff of people to do this.
“…We are dealing with people literally who deal with nothing but tourism. That’s very important. It’s not banks, hospitals and car dealerships. These are people honed in this particular business.”
Maloney told commissioners that while cities like Springfield, Fort Smith, Little Rock, Tulsa, Oklahoma City and the Dallas-Fort Worth area have been the spending focus of advertising, new markets are emerging because of web traffic research.
“So, our emerging markets are, Paducah, Kentucky, oddly enough, Memphis, Tennessee, just across the other side of the border, and Sherman, Texas, out of the DFW market, a strong market for us,” Maloney said. “Our key growth markets, oddly enough, are Chicago, St. Louis, Shreveport and Houston. These are fantastic markets for us.”
In addition to focus markets, Maloney said Eureka Springs is also being advertised in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Maine, and Portland, Ore.
“We’re all over the United States,” he said. “But these are the key areas that we’re looking at.”
Maloney discussed regional and national publications in which Eureka Springs has advertising as well as spots on iHeart Radio podcasts.
“We really like Madden,” Maloney said. “We like the opportunity to work with them. We work with them two, three times a week. We were online with them twice today. And when I say online, we’re online with maybe six [people] or so.
“… I’d like to be all in with Madden in 2025 with this plan.”
The increase in Madden’s budget will be paid for by the CAPC’s revenue stream, Maloney said.
EUREKA PIG SOOIE?
Another thing Maloney said he is excited about for 2025 is the possibility of advertising with Arkansas Razorbacks football, including spots on the two large scoreboards at each end of Razorback Stadium in Fayetteville.
“Maybe one of the significant things, and we’re kind of excited about what may happen here, is our efforts with the Arkansas Razorbacks,” he said. “We did a little bit of test marketing with them this past year. We found out that it was pretty good. Our return on the investment seemed very, very decent. So we’re going to continue to push that envelope. I can’t tell you everything that’s going to happen at this point because it’s not confirmed yet. But we have some big news about that that may be very interesting.”
The exposure in front of a large audience is just something too good to pass up and would be a positive to Eureka Springs, Maloney told commissioners.
“We have an opportunity to do something that few people have an opportunity to do,” he said. “This is to be on the jumbotron at Razorback Stadium, and [Madden is] trying to figure out how they can work it into the budget and perhaps they will. … We’re talking with the 76,000 fans at the Donald W. Reynolds Stadium on a home game day and the opportunity to not only be on that big giant board up there with our shots, but also to be on the ground with our tents and our materials and so forth. This is a major deal. So, we’re looking at it as an opportunity to grow the market in a very, very unique way. This just kills me, to be honest with you. The opportunity to be in front of these people with Eureka Springs is just a huge thing.”
Maloney said he will know “shortly” if “we have the privilege” of working the Razorbacks.
“It is an opportunity that’s unique,” he said. “And I hope that Eureka Springs is able to do this.”
Maloney mentioned that advertising with the Razorbacks is an expensive task, but he felt it would be a worthy investment.
“Razorback fans that are indigenous to the state of Arkansas,” he said. “I think whenever you can associate yourself with a big sports phenomenon like that, you’re in pretty good hands. Obviously, Arkansas doesn’t have a professional sports team as such. So, the closest thing we have are the Hogs. And when you’ve got 76,000 people at this stadium at one time, you’ve got a real phenomenon going on.
“The part that is so fascinating about that … is you’ve got 76,000 people who are paying attention to Eureka Springs who are sharing that experience. So, if they all took a picture of the jumbotron, wow, that’s a lot of social impact that we get. So, I think what we see is the proliferation of a fan base that’s going to help Eureka Springs over time, probably sooner than later. And the other part of that, we do know that we have a tremendous amount of traffic that comes through Eureka Springs of people who are basically are Hog fans.”
NYE EVENT UPDATE
Maloney reported that U.S. News and World Report and CNN recently picked up a story about the New Year’s Eve event being planned, “Bash with a Splash,” which will take place at Basin Spring Park.
“We found out yesterday in kind of a strange way that on New Year’s Eve from 10:30 p.m. until 12:30 a.m. Eureka Springs owns the Fox Channel in Fayetteville,” Maloney said. “And when I say owns it, we are on for two solid hours live. … We have a laser light show. We have two big bands that are coming forward. We’ve got what’s turned out to be an extraordinary parade. We’ve got fire twirlers, dancers, all kinds of crazy stuff that’s going to go on with it. … I think this is going to be the one of the most interesting events that Eureka Springs has experienced in a long, long time.
“… We did request $19,000 from the state of Arkansas to support this. And they said yes. So we’re getting a check. And this is kind of a good thing because it gives us television time in Springfield, Missouri … We’ll have air time in Tulsa along with WGN and then also the Fox Channel in Northwest Arkansas. And we are working out the technical details right now with Fox. It’s going to be kind of a fun time. The weather forecast looks very favorable for us. We’re encouraged about that. So all in all, I think it’s going to be a grand New Year’s Eve. And they have experimented with the water drop and it is dropping. And then as they time it, it should be five, four, three, two, one, welcome to 2025.”
STAFF BONUSES, STATUS TRANSITION
The commission unanimously approved changing all staff from hourly to salary to help eliminate the issue of trying to budget for overtime.
With the change, no overtime will be paid, but days such as “mental health” days will be used when an employee works in excess in a particular week.
Before the change, Maloney was the only salaried employee with the CAPC.
In addition, the commission approved for the 2025 budget and budgets moving forward that 1 percent of the taxes collected be used for staff bonuses to be paid in the last paycheck of December each year.
