TOP CMO: Nancy Mammana, New York City Tourism + Conventions - 'From Crisis to Comeback'

Nancy Mammana  00:00

We always say we're selling is New York City so we don't have cash to invest in our partnerships. We do have very robust channels so we can get brands in front of the right audiences.

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Ben Kaplan  00:08

This is the podcast where we go around the globe to interview marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands, fastest growing companies, and most disruptive startups. I am a tuber. This is TOP CMO with me, Ben Kaplan. Today I'm speaking with Nancy Mammana, CMO of New York City Tourism + Conventions, the official destination marketing organization responsible for promoting tourism and attracting visitors to the Big Apple. Nancy has more than 30 years of experience managing and leading teams in the art, culinary travel Sports and Tourism Industry. At New York City Tourism + Conventions. She started as senior vice president of marketing before taking over a CMO. She previously served in leadership roles at the NBA, the marketing arm patina Restaurant Group, the Alvin Ailey Dance Company and Cunard Line. So what strategies help maximize impact with limited financial resources? And how can you build diverse and inclusive campaigns that benefit the promotion of your products and services? Let's find out with Nancy. Nancy, you have an interesting job because you've had a front row seat to obviously in some ways New York being the world's capitol and epicenter for COVID. Tourism and conventions are a lifeblood of New York. And yet, we've been going through this incredibly chaotic and tumultuous and uncertain times. So how has your focus and the organization's focus shifted from the sort of surprise and shock of everything being closed in 2020, to reopening now, what's changed what's different,

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Nancy Mammana  01:50

I don't think much has changed other than the need for tourism has only become more apparent when you lose it entirely. We were doing really well from a visitation standpoint. And we were on the verge of not overtourism. But we were cooking every year with an increase in the numbers. And we didn't really necessarily ever anticipate anything like the pandemic happening. So I think every destination was somewhat stunned when all of a sudden you can't do what you were designed to do, which is bring in this patient. So I think it was a moment for us to regroup and recalibrate what we were here to do. And for our time, we were helping in any way we could. And we're a member based organizations, we have about 18 to 1800 businesses that are dependent on us to lift up the city and help market the city on their behalf. When they all for the most part I had to close it was a very difficult time. So we emerge thankfully, as New York does, as resilient as ever. The following summer, when the world opened and just really needing to change our targeting approach and fish where the fish are, you know, we we value our international visitors quite a bit. They're 20% of the visitation but they represent 50% of the spend and room nights. But for time they couldn't visit when the borders were closed. So we re targeted and diversified our targeting, to focus more again fishing where the fish are getting locals to patronize our local businesses, as well as tri state area visitors Northeast Corridor visitors until the borders open in November of 2021. Well, we can go back to our international campaign work. So I think we've just really, it's been a targeting shift. And I think, you know, if we ever needed a tourism advocacy program, we no longer needed that, thanks to the pandemic because I think everyone recognized how vital it is. So not only the financial aspect of what the tourists bring in terms of tax revenue and spend, but also the vitality and energy of the city, you really feel that loss if you were here during the pandemic. So I think we've all recognized that Sudanese visitors here contribute a lot to the fabric of the city. And we're actually rebranded the company to lean more even more into who we are putting tourism in our name. So we were formerly interesting company now our New York City tourism conventions, in part, for that reason, because we all recognize its importance, I think, more than ever having lost it. So I think it was really just, you know, targeting shifts, but we're still doing the work that we were doing before. I also think we we always had a focus on DNI and our content, but we redoubled our efforts during that time as well, when we hired an SVP of diversity initiatives and content. And you see the fruits of that work every day and what we do

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Ben Kaplan  04:38

and just for background for people listening to I mean, New York City Tourism + Conventions are classified as a destination marketing organization. It means you're a private agency, but you have a city contract. You also have members and your mandate is to promote tourism and visitation in the city. What happens when you lose one of your primary top Top Five, in this case top three markets where you get your customers from what is it like to lose that, and then try to shift and adjust. And when I'm speaking, of course, is China, which typically was your, I think on your list like UK number one, China number two, Canada number three and so forth in terms of international visitors, suddenly China is closed for any business losing your like number two source of customers would be difficult. What did you do? And how did you think about marketing differently? Yeah,

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Nancy Mammana  05:31

well, you know, long the same veins, along the same vein as what we've dealt with at the start of the pandemic having to diversify. I think every destination felt the loss of the Chinese traveler in their active travelers. And we were getting about a million Chinese travelers a year, as it come out of the pandemic, we were hovering between three and 400,000, which is great. More Chinese are are traveling, we're now at the on the approved destination lists as of last month for China. So we brought a delegation in to reactivate the market last month. And that was really fortuitous. Because the market opened the week before we had this trip plan. We had to diversify. So we saw opportunities with other markets where India they were traveling here more Brazil was traveling in here more, and so on US domestic, we had a renewed focus on the US domestic market. So we were forced to, again fish where the fish are to make up for the loss of what we experienced with China. And we're still rebuilding, we know we're not quite back, we we know that there are issues as it relates to airlift. Obviously, various wars that are happening are adding complications to air routes visas are a challenge. But we're closing the government is closing the gap and how long it takes to get a visa to come here. And many Chinese nationals have 10 year visa. So that's good, those folks are traveling. But New York may not necessarily be at the top of the list as it was before. Because we've lost some ground. We've maintained a presence in China and our social channels throughout pandemic to stay top of line. But Asian travelers have been traveling domestically within Asia for for the last couple of years. So we need to renew energy and interest in New York City. And as soon as we feel very bullish on the market. I think as soon as the air routes are brought back to where they were, we will start seeing more of those travelers, hopefully next year. But yeah, we just had to look wherever else we could where we saw opportunity to make up and how

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Ben Kaplan  07:21

much are you able to rely on certain assets that you've built up over time, especially assets that drive maybe seasonal visitation or seasonal interest, particularly in your off seasons? What I'm talking about is you have assets that I think are interesting and interesting for other brands and think about too, like Restaurant Week, Broadway week, Off Broadway week. And these are initiatives campaigns, especially in off seasons, right, where not the typical travel seasons as well. So have those assets proven useful and helpful? And do you recommend other brands might not be in tourism or destination marketing to have these kinds of reliable assets you can rely on year in and year out to drive interest? Yeah,

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Nancy Mammana  08:06

I mean, we think so. We started Restaurant Week in 1992, during the Democratic National Convention. So we like to say it's the grandmother of all restaurant weeks, the original and 31st year, this year, and it's particularly during the pandemic was a lifeline. When everything was shut down. We launched restaurant weeks ago, we had over 800 restaurants that program which is staggering. Normally it's between two and 400. Sometimes we get to 500. Lately, our numbers have been going up up and up because of the support that is needed to support the tourism hospitality sector, particularly the restaurant industry. So it's a difficult time still for many of our members across floors in the hospitality and need programs are designed to support their business during the shoulder season. So these are said January, February and July and August are typically when we do that, although probably we kept in September. And we have off for a week on heels that so it's critical that we support these businesses in any way we can. Having a common offer really helps we added hotel week, I think three years ago that's only during the winter where we do program called Winter outing which is when Restaurant Week, musty week for attractions Broadway week and hotel we happen thing time that has turned into an overnight visitation driver because you may not come to New York just to go to restaurant week. But you might want all this value is happening at the same time. So we found in United Airlines as a partner and track as a partner, because it really is who worked with the city is very busy during the holidays. But really, if you want great value, the best time to come is January, February. So those programs have allowed us to build something bigger. And it allows us to support individual sectors in a much more targeted way, driving traffic to their websites, on whatever we can do to lift it off from an immediate perspective. So we think they're critical. Typically it's a local or regional visitor but we are seeing when we have the car global tourism campaign In motion, so let's say it's a campaign in France, we see those people coming to our website and then going to the restaurant week pages or that for that forum with big pages. So we not that it's a driver on its own. But we if you're coming here, we want you to be fully aware of everything we have to offer at that time. So we're starting with cross pollination with the international visitors.

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Ben Kaplan  11:20

in how do you think about partner marketing and the importance of partner marketing? I mean, you've mentioned airlines, certain hotels, others that involved in tourism, obviously have a vested interest. But how do you recommend making partner marketing more efficient and effective, I think, partner marketing, incredibly high ROI and value with the right partner in the right program. And then there can be other partnerships that basically don't drive much at all. It's kind of Tumbleweed. How do you figure out the difference? And how do you structure partnership programs? So they are drivers of ROI?

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Nancy Mammana  11:55

Yeah, I mean, for us, it's critical. Because we don't have big media budgets, our budgets have fluctuated, and along with our funding, which is a little bit volatile. And so when we don't have big media budgets, we rely on partnerships to expand the reach and awareness and direct traffic to our channel. So the valuation filter for us is, will the partner be willing to do that link to our site, tag us on social and really integrate, and I come from a partnerships background on the agency side for many years, we have to reframe the conversation every time we enter into a partnership, because it's not like we're packaged good. We're not a liquor brand, you know, we're not a thing, the only thing we're selling is New York City. So we don't have cash to invest in our partnerships. But we do have very robust channel that we can get brands in front of the right audiences. So when it's a travel campaign, clearly, there's a very organic way that we can target people that are looking for travel to New York online, and then send those warm leads to a partner's website to capture a booking, sometimes we work with some promotion. So reporting on that in the heights a couple of years ago, the film, because it allowed us a very organic opportunity to highlight Washington Heights. So we got the cast to provide some interviews, and we showcase businesses that were featured in the film, it was a it was a great way to drive a high level of awareness around our content, we're always looking to promote various neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs to your point and in the outer neighborhoods of Manhattan. So when we can find an organic step that we both have the same, you know, mutually beneficial relationship, it worked well, for us. And again, we always are looking to make sure the partners like minded and can help expand our reach. Because again, we rely on that we have a lot of great content, we're always looking for ways to increase the regional hours of that content. So that's what we look for. There

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Ben Kaplan  13:45

are obviously certain people influencers, celebrities who are very passionate about New York, right? You can even think of your mind like, Okay, who do I know is famous who from New Yorker and you start listing out people are very associated with the city, how do you tap into others with influence different type of partnership, marketing, maybe it's with individuals who want to get behind the cause of New York and believe in it, and maybe they're expensive to hire if you had to hire them for your corporate ad campaign. But if it's for New York, they might be interested in putting some support behind it.

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Nancy Mammana  14:18

We experienced quite a bit about during the pandemic when everybody wanted to help. So we had a variety of talent across television selling Broadway horror, New Yorkers, giving us itineraries for their favorite places to go. And we put that on our website and our social channels. So sometimes they posted about it, sometimes they didn't, but it definitely helped raising awareness level. And I would say that was more 2021 When people were just starting to travel again. You know, and now we're a little bit past that and typically, people want to be paid and we get that. So not as much anymore. Sometimes you had lightning in a bottle with talent, but it really, you know, it really depends. So Oh, it's there was definitely a crest for that happening when we were just trying to find find our way out of a pandemic. So we were very grateful for that. And sometimes talent will do it on their own. And honestly, that's great. I mean, if you look at Sarah Jessica Parker for quite some time, she she'll post about her local neighborhood businesses, Jaipur restaurants, she goes to stores, organically, it just, it's just what she does that she's not interested in the formal partnership. But we're thrilled that she does it, you know, Jerry Seinfeld was doing it, you know, we don't have to necessarily have an organized set, you know, partnership was structured partnership with that, but that particular talent, but if they're doing it, and they're promoting good news about New York City, that that's what we care about. So sometimes it's just about that. And if they choose to do it organically, we fully embrace that, where we can partner together. We love it. But you know, it's challenging without without any cash. And I think perhaps we're out of the time where everybody felt like, it was so dire that they just felt the need to do something. I mean, we were, you know, Debbie Mays are a narrated a film for us during lockdown, you know, in the pot for nothing. And that was incredible. We just, we knew someone that knew her, we asked her and she sent it to me on her iPhone, and it was terrific. And it was really just about galvanizing locals to stay to hang in there. So we made a series of asks in 2020, and 2021. Now I think it just it has to be the right fit. And you know, we still might be asked, sometimes it happens sometimes.

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Ben Kaplan  16:24

And sometimes it's one of those things, we've certainly found at a top our global marketing agency where sometimes you have to lay the groundwork, and the foundation and the relationship first. And then there's a moment of need, something happens in the news, something captures the countries of the world's attention. And those relationships are there. So even reaching out starting a conversation, when those who are you know, super interested or passionate about New Yorker, I live in San Francisco, those are people who are passionate about San Francisco and think it's the greatest place and reaching out and having a communications channel can prove useful when there is a moment of galvanizing that we got to bring everyone together. And it's not like, Oh, we're asking them for the first time. No, we've been talking for years about this. Now's the moment if you're interested to do this. I know typically, you don't do the big TV budgets or TV ads. But in 2021, you received a federal grant to support this idea that New York City is back open, like it's open for business and you want to get that message out. What was the effect of that? And how did that compare to yours? When you don't have that big hammer? What did you kind of learn about the power of television or how you can replicate it when you don't have that big hammer to use?

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Nancy Mammana  17:35

Well, we had never done a television campaign to my knowledge until we received that funding from the American rescue fund. So thanks to Senator Schumer or former Mayor de Blasio, they were able to give us a substantial grant that allowed us to jumpstart recovery, we had been shut down. Our budgets were very low. At that time, we had had some staff reductions, it was not a great time to the organization. We needed that influx of money in order to create the right urgency. We did some consumer sentiment studies at that time. And it was overwhelming that people didn't know if it was time to go back to New York City. Was it going to be the New York City that I knew and loved? Is everything open? What am I going to find when I get there because all they were seeing on the news was you know, New York City was a ghost town. And so we have we're up against a lot we're in New York City might have been the destination of choice as a matter of course, before we took a big hit in the beginning of the pandemic as the epicenters you mentioned. So the TV campaign was really designed just to drive urgency and show and demonstrate vibrancy. So if you saw those spots, it was that the tagline became it's time for New York City as a result of the research we did and kept it pretty straightforward to actually tell people that yes, it's time to visit New York City. And it was really a compilation reel of really fun, vibrant, exciting things that were going on in the city right now. So we start we rolled it out in the summer, it was obviously a lot of outdoor activity that was going on, we followed it up with a Broadway themed spot with Ben Vereen and fall September, I believe in launch that and then we did another one around holiday. So that kicked off what we overlaid onto our global tourism campaign was which carried through the theme. It's time for New York City. And we have been really pleased with the result of that campaign. It uses Lady Liberty as a key visual. And we've been running that ever since for the last two years. And the metrics on the campaign are terrific. Because we can measure the digital a little bit more easily. The TV was meant to just spread very broad awareness around the fact that we're here and we're open. So we needed that as an added element where we typically have not everybody knew that New York City was vibrant and energetic, but all of a sudden there was doubt. And so that was the purpose of the TV component. I don't know that we'll be able to do that again with our budgets, but it came at the exact right time when we really needed it.

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Ben Kaplan  20:51

How does that impact of stories about issues that would cause people not to visit? How does that impact your job? I mean, could be crime, could be homelessness could be other issues. I'm based in San Francisco. So it's had a very real impact here of like the narrative about even someone coined it the doom loop of sort of worse things leading to worse things leading to worse things. And people concerned, rightly or wrongly about whether they want to visit. So how much do you deal with that? And how has that had an effect on New York City, these negative type stories,

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Nancy Mammana  21:25

you know, we do international events, a press conferences, sales missions, trade shows all over the world. And we we have not faced that concern from the international visitor, I think they have a well rounded view on these challenges. And they're not just happening in New York City. To your point, every major city has suffered a little bit of a setback with the pandemic and has experienced some, you know, some difficulties and challenges coming out of the pandemic and is a global issue. And we don't we don't ever get that question, which is really interesting and unfortunate, where I think we are seeing it a little bit more is in the tri state area, which has impacted Broadway a little bit more, because that's a big demographic target demographic for Broadway. And I think in combination with remote work, that's been a challenge getting those folks back to New York City. And I think that is largely because of the news cycle, we see that and that that's very difficult to combat. And we, we on the marketing side, as well as our colleagues on the communication side, do whatever we can to promote good news and share positive and then generic city wherever we can. But that's a challenge right now. And I think it primarily is more more in the tri state area. Fortunately, our international visitors are really excited to come back, they are coming back. And we're not seeing that as much of a challenge there.

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Ben Kaplan  22:43

I want to mention a couple of other marketing vehicles that are unique to you. One of them is local politicians, leaders, officials, others who have sort of a vested interest in promoting the New York City and might like to get involved in a certain initiative. I think Mayor Eric Adams has been someone who has been kind of, uh, at least part of his role as being a cheerleader for the city as well. How do you think about leveraging that as a channel that can promote things? Or do you not think about that, and you and sort of try to avoid any combination of a political element to what you're doing?

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Nancy Mammana  23:17

I mean, we are very grateful that Mayor Adams has a very good understanding of the power of tourism, he believes in tourism. And he's been very supportive of us. He has been involved with the organization since he was Brooklyn Borough President, so very familiar with the work we do, and since he's become mayor has been really supportive and understanding of what our work requires. So we're very grateful for that. And anytime he joins us to promote, let's say, the kickoff of Restaurant Week, which he typically does every year, and of course exponentially increases the amount of media coverage we get. So we're very grateful for that. And don't take that for granted. So we're fortunate that our mayor understands that and what the power of tourism is, and he's been very supportive. So we're grateful for whenever we're able to get his support and visibly attend an event with us. What

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Ben Kaplan  24:05

about you mentioned diversity, equity and inclusion, and specifically, that being really a greater emphasis placed on initiatives you hired someone to focus on it during the pandemic, there was the rise of that, and I know you're doing other things now like celebrating the, I think 50th anniversary of the birthday of hip hop or doing other things to celebrate things. So so how much is that specifically calling out D and I impacted, you know, the types of things you highlight in the city that you might not have highlighted before, that aren't as much of the obvious tourist attractions, but more of some of the other stories that maybe are really cool and interesting to get missed?

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Nancy Mammana  24:43

We've always been FirePro focused, always. That's always been our remit. So I don't think we've always promoted the neighborhoods in New York City. I mean, there's so much that makes New York City unique throughout our neighborhoods, and if you're a repeat visitor, we want to gives you new reasons to visit. So that's imperative. And it's always been imperative, I think, as a result of a lot of the conversations that were happening during the pandemic, around the eni. And it was a redoubled effort around that. And we did decide to hire someone to head up those initiatives. And he also was a content creator on Dell holder. He's our SVP of content and diversity initiatives. And his role is dual fold. He will work across the organization on both internal and external webinars, educational programs, etc. But also from a content perspective has spearheaded a number of efforts with our reps and our content team that has allowed us to tell stories in a new way. So I think we've we've definitely redoubled our efforts. And you could see that in our content series, like local legends that just premiered at the Chelsea Film Festival, and it's had great success online. And those are more longer form pieces. They're six minutes each one person from every borough sort of taking you around some of their favorite places, and really authentic, real New Yorkers. And we're doing much more of that as much as our budgets allow that type of storytelling, you'll see a lot more of that. In our work over the last couple of years, prior to local legends, we did a series called the freedom to be where we showcase different things around New York City that you even as a local you might not know, you might not know that there's a black surfing community in the Rockaways, when they're black cowboys and queens, it's really interesting that we're telling stories that I think even the most jaded among us, New Yorkers that may not ever know about. So as a visitor, they're especially interesting. So those kinds of things are new in terms of the amount of resources we're deploying against it. And our hope is to continue doing that as our budgets allow. So it's just we've really scaled up the effort that we already had, we were always promoting our neighborhoods, I mean, quite frankly, that's our neighborhoods are what makes us unique as a destination. And we're lucky, we have a lot to talk about here. So you will do yourself a disservice as a destination to only talk about the same thing all the time, it really makes us unique. And that's as a marketer of what we you obviously want to focus on, no matter what the product is, do you want to focus on what makes you unique?

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Ben Kaplan  27:05

Final question for you is, aside from a larger and less volatile budget, but aside from that, if you could have one wish for the future of the organization, and in your job as CMO, what would that be? What kind of resource or tool or support or insights do you not have now that you'd love to have that would make a difference going forward?

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Nancy Mammana  27:27

I mean, I have to say it's our budgets. It's very challenging to plan, when you don't know what your budgets are, or you have a budget, and then it gets cut, and then you apply for a grant to reinstate the budget, it's the single biggest challenge we have, we are we are basically doing everything in house here. The only thing we don't do is media buying and search. But we have in house content team social design, photography, etc. We have very robust content, I would love to do more. But that's not necessarily the issue, the issue is making sure enough people see it. And we do need a more sustainable funding model so that we can only increase our efforts over time, so only get more partnerships, and more exposure or more awareness. So I mean, that really is the challenge. And for any marketer, it presents a very challenging way of planning when the budget is so volatile. So I have to isolate that is the biggest issue because we have very talented people here. And we do great work. And we're having an impact, which is extremely gratifying on an individual level. But we could do so much more if we had more resources. So it really does come down to that. And we hope to fix that one day. But but that is the thing that keeps us all up at night, especially me because I'm the one that basically spends the money. Okay,

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28:46

sure. Sure.

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28:48

Make sure no one I've got.

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Ben Kaplan  28:50

Thank you so much, Nancy Mammana, CMO of New York City Tourism + Conventions, thank you for joining us on TOP CMO chatting with you makes me want to visit New York City and of course, it's amazing here in San Francisco. So you've got to come visit us here as well.

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Nancy Mammana  29:04

I'm heading there next week. So

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Ben Kaplan  29:06

perfect. Sounds great. Thank you so much for joining us.

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Tom Cain  29:09

Thank you so much. This was brought to you by TOP Thought Leader. Find out more at topthoughtleader.com

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