EDUCATE | EMPOWER | ENGAGE | ENTERTAIN
Presentation Topics & Descriptions
The Topics and accompanying descriptions found on this page are meant to get "your creative juices" flowing. There are no "canned" or "off the shelf" presentations for a Roger Brooks audience. Instead, we invite you to use the below and/or other topics that can be found in our Vault as a starting point. Many of our topics can apply to any type of conference.
As Walt Disney said, "If you can dream it, you can do it!"
TOPICSNEWFOR2020
SHIFT HAPPENS AND IT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW
Going back to "the way it used to be" is not an option. The greatest shift since electricity and the automobile is taking place right now across America, and the future of your town depends on how you adapt to these dramatic changes. In this engaging, inspiring and often humorous keynote address, Roger Brooks will share with you the dramatic transformation that's taking place and the ten must-implement initiatives that will ENERGIZE your city, EMPOWER your local stakeholder organizations, and help you sow the seeds of prosperity for the next several generations.
Good for: Municipal Leagues, Downtown & Main Street Organizations
ROAD TRIP! HOW TO CRAFT, MARKET AND MONETIZE AMAZING ROAD TRIPS
Ninety-five percent of all travel in North America is via private automobile: rental car, RV or trailer, motorcycle, or your own vehicle. In this engaging and inspiring keynote address you'll learn, through real-life examples, the seven keys to crafting, marketing and monetizing amazing road trips. From one-hour scenic routes to multi-day excursions, road trips should be a HUGE part of your marketing and product development efforts, helping to make you an outstanding destination.
Good for: Tourism Organizations
THE TOP SEVEN TRENDS AND HOW TO TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF THEM
In this fun, engaging, and inspiring workshop you’ll discover the top seven travel trends and how you can best tap into each one, at low cost, dramatically increasing your local tourism spending. Roger will share with you three surprising statistics that will have you rethinking your marketing efforts; the top three local must-have amenities; when and where visitors are spending most of their travel dollars; and how to best allocate your marketing dollars for an incredibly strong return on investment.
Good for: Tourism Organizations
RV AND TRAILERING: HOW TO ATTRACT AND MONETIZE THIS
FAST-GROWING TOURISM SEGMENT
In this fascinating workshop you’ll be amazed by five key statistics that are making RVing and trailering one of the fastest-growing travel segments, and how you can attract and monetize this growing market. These folks bring with them a lot of spending power, so Roger will show you how to entice them to spend more time and money in your community. Especially in the rural areas, this group can elevate you to “major destination” status – and in short order. Roger will share the new demographics of RVers, the top five resources they use to plan a trip, and what you can do to close the sale making you the must-visit destination. You’ll even learn how to get these visitors to do most of the marketing for you, helping you tap into this niche without spending an arm and a leg.
Good for: Tourism Organizations
ADDITIONALTOPICS
THE SEVEN INGREDIENTS OF AN OUTSTANDING DOWNTOWN
This fascinating presentation is thee culmination of a seven-year project where Roger and his crew visited and researched 2,000 downtowns or downtown districts, including– from towns of a few hundred residents to districts in urban centers. They – chose 400 of the most successful, and from those found the 20 most common ingredients that lead to their success. The most important seven ingredients were shared by all 400,But all 400 had seven ingredients, and these are critical to your town’s success. Come ready for fun, real-life examples, mistakes made, and incredible success stories.
Good for: Municipal Leagues, Downtown and Main Street Organizations
REVITALIZING A DOWNTOWN: THE PRIORITY LIST
All too often communities will spend millions of dollars on beautiful streetscapes and façade improvements, yet downtown is still dead as a doornail. Not that attractive streets aren’t important, but sometimes the steps to revitalization are they are often done in the wrong order. In this fascinating, photography-rich keynote, you’ll learn the step-by-step process to making your downtown an incredible destination for business and investment, as a place to live and play, and that will be a popular visitor destination.
Good for: Municipal Leagues, Downtown and Main Street Organizations
IT'S TIME TO MOVE FROM DOWNTOWN EVENTS TO ACTIVITIES
AND HOW TO MAKE IT HAPPEN
What’s the comes first step toin revitalizeing a downtown? Getting pPeople to spend time there on a consistent basis. If you’re like most places, you have the same group of people, most of them volunteers, working the better part of a year, to produce a single or two-day downtown event. And if you add up every downtown event, including First Fridays and weekly farmers markets, it’s difficult to produce more thanget past 40 event days a year. Yet, if you want zero retail vacancies and a vibrant downtown, you need at least 250 “activity” days versus 40 or fewer “event days.” Get ready for a mind-shift. Activities are far easier to produce, and they’ll energize your volunteers, while attracting more people to spend more time downtown. that will better facilitate and energize your volunteers, will be far easier to produce, and This workshop shows how towill make your downtown economically thriving and become yourthe “community living room.” full of life and economically thriving.
Good for: Municipal Leagues, Downtown and Main Street Organizations
THE TOP 5 MOST IMPORTANT TOURISM AMENITIES YOU NEED RIGHT NOW
I’ve often stated that marketing will bring visitors to you just once. The only thing that brings them back is your product: the primary attractions, the complementary activities, local amenities, and the people they interface with. In this presentation address Roger will talk about the five most important amenities that will ensure an outstanding visitor experience that will keep visitors coming back time and again.
Good for: Municipal Leagues, Downtown and Main Street Organizations, Tourism Organizations
HOW TO GET YOUR LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS ON THE SAME PAGE,
PULLING IN THE SAME DIRECTION
You are far more effective as one loud voice, versus numerous separate small voices, when it comes to marketing your community. To win, you need everyone working together, and when this happens, success is inevitable. Yet communities tend to work in silos: economic development, tourism, downtown, the local chamber of commerce, schools, medical facilities, historical and arts societies, and even city departments – each doing their own thing.
In this fast-paced, engaging presentation, you’ll see how to break out of the silos and create partnerships with common goals, objectives, and outcomes that will galvanize the community.
Good for: Municipal Leagues, Downtown and Main Street Organizations
STEP-BY-STEP: HOW FIRST-TIME VISITORS CHOOSE THEIR DESTINATION, ACTIVITIES & LODGING
Research has shown stated that the average visitor planning to travel to a new destination for the first time visits 27 different websites. In this workshop, we follow 40 people as they plan a trip to someplace new, detailing every step in their process, what websites they visited, what influenced them, and what the outcome was. Will they go there? How long will they stay? What will they do when they arrive? What closed the sale? What appealed to them, what were their frustrations in their planning efforts, and what were the top three things that made up their minds.
Good for: Municipal Leagues, Downtown and Main Street Organizations, Tourism Organizations
SOCIAL MEDIA - YOUR TOP 10
Are you dealing with social media overload? Twitter, SnapChat, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Google, TripAdvisor, and others can be overwhelming. In this presentation, Roger will provide you with the roles of the various social media sites, how to prioritize them, and how to integrate them with your other marketing efforts. To top it off, he’ll address the top 10 things you can do to best leverage your social media efforts with specifics for each social media outlet.
Good for: Municipal Leagues, Dowtnwon and Main Street Organizations, Tourism Organiztions, Destination Marketing Organizations
ONLINE ADVERTISING: IS IT WORTH IT, HOW IT WORKS,
AND HOW TO LEVERAGE IT
We all see those pop-up ads online, and, for some reason, they seem to mirror our online searches, products we are interested in or have purchased, or places we’ve looked at going. IS this an effective use of your advertising dollars? How is it done? How much does it cost? In this presentation, Roger will show some real-life examples, with both small and larger budgets. We'll learn what works and what doesn’t, and how to take advantage of these options if they’re right for you.
Good for: Municipal Leagues, Downtown and Main Street Organizations, Tourism Organizations, Destination Marketing Organizations
THE TOP 5 REALITIES THAT ARE RE-SHAPING AMERICAN DOWNTOWNS
FOR THE COMING GENERATIONS
In 1964 Petula Clark sang, the words “Go downtown, where you can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares, there’s no finer place for sure” in the top 10 hit, Downtown. Here we are, 56 years later, in a new reality. Rwhere regional malls are dying, Amazon controls much of our shopping dollars, butand yet downtowns are back and more important than ever. In this fast-paced, eye-opening presentation, you’ll learn the five things that are reshaping the North American downtowns and how you can rejuvenate your downtown to attract investment, residential and lodging development, new businesses, and lots of fun activities. This will make you THE destination of choice as a place to live, work and visit.
Good for: Municipal Leagues, Downtown and Main Street Organizations
THE 7 REASONS WHY DOWNTOWN SHOULD BE YOUR TOP PRIORITY -
AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
For the first time in North American history, quality of life is leading economic development. Jobs are going where the talent is, or where the talent wants to be. So, how do you become the destination of choice for new jobs and investment? In this presentation, Roger will dive into the seven reasons why thriving downtowns are key to this new reality, and what you can do to make sure you become the next great destination chosen by talented job seekers and businesses.
Good for: Municipal Leagues, Downtown and Main Street Organizations
HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR MILLENIALS: YOUR FUTURE IS IN THEIR HANDS
The Millennial generation is the largest in North American history, and they are the most educated, the most diverse, and the most civically-minded. In this fascinating, and outright fun presentation, Roger will share with you several stories of how Millennials are reshaping and revitalizing communities everywhere. You’ll be amazed at the positive difference they are making, and how cities and towns – and particularly downtowns – are evolving with their help. You’ll see how these towns motivate their Millennials to become involved, and the positive contributions they can make. If you want to be THE destination of choice, as a place to live, invest in and visit, engage your Millennials.