"Poorly Attended" Means "Poorly Publicized" : How St. Albans Has Damaged Its Brand Through Poor Event Promotion

If St. Albans doesn't start getting bigger crowds at our events, news media  will stop covering our events. 

Radio stations will stop doing "live remotes" from our events.

Speakers will stop accepting invitations to speak at our events. I couldn't get some of the speakers I wanted in our Ward 4 Speaker Series because these speakers had accepted invitations for meetings that were never promoted and found themselves speaking to only 4 or 5 people.

St. Albans has damaged its brand by inviting TV reporters to cover events with embarrassingly low attendance. Here's an example: On May 14 2013 St. Albans had a "citywide" meeting of all neighborhood watch volunteers. We were to meet in the St. Albans High School library. I was expecting a big crowd. When I got there I felt ashamed and embarrassed because there were more media people than there were neighborhood watch people. When you hear the words "poorly attended" think "poorly publicized". 

If you organize an event you have a responsibility to promote that event. You owe it to the busy people you invite to speak. You owe it to the vendors who come there to sell their products and services. You owe it to the news media who come there expecting to have something to cover.

Promotion of your event basically takes 2 forms. (a) promotion in advance of the event and (b) realtime coverage of the event itself. St. Albans organizations do the latter but not the former. Or, put another way, if you skip the pre-event publicity then when the TV cameras arrive they document your failure to do your job. You'll have more cameras than people. Pretty soon, even the cameras won't come to memorialize your failure to do your job.

St. Albans organizations have damaged the St. Albans brand by becoming the city whose events are not news because they are poorly publicized which translates to poorly attended.

If the leaders of St. Albans organizations want to enjoy being on TV in the future they have to prove that when the cameras arrive there'll be something newsworthy to cover.
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Higginbotham At Large reads all comments but only publishes the comments of people who clearly identify themselves. There's no Ring of Gyges for me, so there's no Ring of Gyges for you.