Arizona is a 140,006 square-mile theme park surrounded by six and a half billion potential tourists. We are the Grand Canyon State. We have Tombstone, the Sonoran Desert Museum, Sedona, Flagstaff, Route 66, Lake Powell, the White Mountains, Scottsdale, Kitt Peak, even Biosphere. People come from the world over to sample what’s left of the old West, immerse themselves in native-American culture and enjoy the palpable Hispanic influence on our architecture, food, music and way of life.

Arizona visitors bring nothing but cash and take nothing but pictures. It's a $10 billion industry.

The Arizona Daily Star reports recently at least 40 business conferences have decided not to come or have cancelled their Arizona meetings, resulting in a loss of $15 million to the state’s conference hotels. Further, they report the economic impact is probably quadrupled as the figure only includes room charges lost directly to the hotels. Many of these groups are willing to come to Arizona, but fear their attendees are hesitant to come due to their own political views or reasons of safety.

That’s 40 lost opportunities for my company—and thousands of others—to bid on product and service contracts with these groups.

It’s 40 fewer groups requiring waiters, bartenders, valets, bellmen, managers and maids; 40 fewer opportunities to provide meat and produce, beverages, greens fees and shopping sprees. Some economic forecasters tell us the real economic cost is actually seven times the room rate loss. They say every tourism dollar brought into a market turns over seven times in the local economy. Those dollars support local businesses not even related to tourism.

When Governor Brewer announces beheadings in Tucson and Congressman Grijalva calls for a boycott over SB 1070, they ought to be ashamed. They are calling in the artillery to bomb our own troops. According to the Arizona Tourism Alliance web site, "The total (direct and secondary) impact on the Arizona travel industry in 2008 was 310,000 jobs." 310,000 jobs!

Arizona tourism can provide good paying jobs—and lots of tax income—right now if we can convince the world Arizona is the safe and unique place to visit it really is. Lowering taxes to the thousands of tourism businesses in Arizona won't help create job one, unless there are tourists and conferees here to serve. In fact, the current climate actually reduces tax income to the state: When the industry has no income, it pays no taxes. Additionally, state and municipal income from dedicated room taxes and user fees for items like car rentals and airports are shrinking.

There is a very real perception out there that Arizona is physically dangerous and politically toxic. We need leadership at every level to commit itself to making Arizona an attractive and safe option for tourism dollars. The damage to Arizona's brand is not irreparable, but it's going to be a long arduous struggle to get back our reputation. Maybe we can start by not shooting off our mouths without regard to the repercussions of expedient political hyperbole.

Plus+

Advertising+Improvisation

Writing copy and performing improvisation are remarkably similar. They
both ask for suggestions for topics and stakes. They both have rules
which a player or writer must follow. Events and reasoning must follow
in a thematic order. Both have space and time constraints. There needs
to be a big finish.

Writing+Distance

There are limitless analogies for writing. Writing copy for a thirty
second television ad is akin to sprinting. After some sort of warm-up,
the writer blasts out of the writer's blocks and runs the 40-word dash
in under forty minutes. Novels are like marathons, putting one word in
front of the other, writing chapter after chapter, downing a cup of
fresh inspiration every so often, never stopping, wondering how you got
involved in such a grueling activity.

Writing+

Writers write, eh? (That's my Canadian coming out.) Writers strive for
poetry even when writing a short commercial:

Here is the message
Remember it forever
Do what I say now.

But there's no prose like promotional prose:

Gates Assisted Living (Pearly Gates Nursing Home) lies nestled in a
time-worn arroyo (in a dry riverbed) deep in the heart of the Sonoron
Desert (somewhere far out of town, where land was cheap). Once you
discover the diversity (snakes) of this unique climate (it's hot),
you'll know you are home (because you can't be trusted to live alone
anymore and you ain't living with your kids, that's for sure).

M+M+C+C

M+M+C+C

Meetings + Marketing + Communications + Comedy

Because I have a big-fat opinion about just about everything.

Meetings:

LaughingStock Comedy Company - of which I am a founding member and performing partner - has performed well over 1000 shows for corporate and association special events. We have worked closely with meeting producers, destination management firms, speakers bureaus and the CEO's administrative assistants to create successful meetings. We've seen them from the inside out and the outside in. We've seen what works and we've seen plenty of disasters, er, teachable moments. Now I want to share.

Marketing:

A&A&DS Advertising Communications Consultants was created the same month I started in comedy because, frankly, comedy was paying $35 a gig at the time and the rent was more. My experience in radio and advertising agencies — combined with the comedic force I was working with — allowed us to work with a select group of clients to create fun and effective marketing campaigns. It also functioned as the in-house marketing arm of our comedy company. We had symbiosis before it was even in Webster's.

Communications:

That's what it's all about: This blog, advertising, marketing, public relations, training, sales, social media, email, cereal boxes, you name it; it's all about communications and finding creative ways to capture people's time and imagination.

Comedy:

Comedy makes messages memorable. Comedy makes the bitter pill easier to swallow. Comedy is healing. Everyone likes a fart joke.

So here it is: M+M+C+C. Let's see where it goes.