Karlee Cemo-McIntosh is the brand and community engagement director for Visit Sacramento , a destination marketing organization that is funded primarily through hotel tax . Cemo-McIntosh , a Sacramento native and graduate of San Diego State University , joined the organization in 2015 to manage Sacramento365 , an events website under the umbrella of Visit Sacramento . In her current role , she ’ s tasked with improving the visitor experience in Sacramento and helping to tell the story of the region . Comstock ’ s spoke to Cemo- McIntosh about how the organization has taken advantage of new opportunities over the past year .
How has the pandemic shifted your efforts as a brand and community engagement director , and altered the opportunities Visit Sacramento was able to pursue ? Visit Sacramento … is a destination marketing organization , or DMO . … Our primary audience is the visitor , and we have always been very effective in our marketing to that audience . We are selling them on Sacramento ( as a ) destination . Between 2018 and 2019 , we were in the midst of reimagining our partnership program , going through a rebranding process , and we were really starting to fully grasp how loud our Sacramento megaphone was , especially across our social media platforms . And despite having this recognizable organization name , a relationship-focused president and CEO and leadership team — and a highly engaged digital presence — we saw that Sacramento residents and businesses didn ’ t fully comprehend who we were , what we do and how our work impacts them .
At the beginning of 2020 , I was actually really starting to transition into this brand and community engagement space within our organization , because we saw this as an opportunity to be more cohesive and strategic in our local outreach , marketing efforts and overall messaging about Visit Sacramento and our family of brands . My expertise with Sacramento365 has really helped me get into that place because Sac365 has always been that hyperlocal arm of Visit Sacramento . … I think COVID really accelerated the shift of this community engagement mindset . … With travel at a halt for much of this past year , our residents became our audience . Travel , thankfully , has started to pick back up , and I feel this silver lining for us is that this past year put us in a position to really understand the importance of our partnerships and our relationships with our residents .
We ’ ve recently created our organization ’ s chief of diversity , equity and inclusion position , which Sonya Bradley , our longtime chief marketing officer , has transitioned into . Now we also have this emphasis on economic recovery coming out of COVID , so that element and that focus on community engagement I think is more essential than ever . From the travel side , from the visitor perspective , we know Sacramento ’ s leisure travelers , many of them are visiting friends and family of our region . We also know that word-ofmouth is always one of the most trusted types of referrals . So from that community engagement aspect , we want to be able to help empower our locals and businesses to be Sacramento ’ s ambassadors and help create a welcoming experience for everyone ( who ) visits our city . But we can ’ t tell our residents how to feel ; they need to be able to authentically experience that and feel that sense of pride for themselves .
What are some more examples of how you implement a community engagement mindset ? We ’ re storytellers . ... As an example , across all of our brands ’ social media platforms , which includes Visit Sacramento , Sacramento365 , ( America ’ s ) Farm-to-Fork ( Capital ) and ( Sacramento Sports Commission ), we have over 440,000 followers and receive over 67.7 million annual impressions . We have a “ Visit Sacramento Podcast ” … that has been a fantastic addition to our marketing tool kit , and especially for that local audience and capturing those stories . Video content has actually been a really fun thing . That ’ s an area we ’ ve expanded on over the past three-plus years .
Tell me more about the “ Visit Sacramento Podcast .” I wish that I could take credit for this . It is such a wonderful addition to the type of content we produce , and our ability to be those effective storytellers , but Brandon Darnell , our content marketing manager and podcast host , gets the credit . A little backstory : In 2019 , we partnered with Johnny Flores of Flores Podcast Consulting to pilot the podcast with six episodes centered around farm-to-fork conversations that aired in the weeks leading up to the Farm-to-Fork Festival in September . The overall feedback ( and ) engagement were a great success , and the plan was to expand the number of episodes and conversations in 2020 , putting a primary focus on that visitor audience . The first episode of 2020 was scheduled for the week that the country started shutting down ( due to the coronavirus pandemic ).
July 2021 | comstocksmag . com 25