Clearlake marketing committee outlines six‑month plan to recruit outside event organizers

The Clearlake Marketing Committee on Feb. 2021 agreed to pursue a focused marketing campaign aimed at recruiting third‑party event organizers to bring new events to the city.

Committee leadership laid out a phased approach and monthly workshops to run from the current meeting through June: generate a long list of candidate events, hold event‑grading workshops to evaluate city workload, community impact and economic viability, create 30‑word venue descriptions for priority sites, launch a targeted outreach campaign (planned for April), review incoming leads in May and aim to finalize commitments in June.

Why it matters: committee members said prioritizing a small number of externally run, turnkey events will help Clearlake expand visitor draws without overburdening staff. The campaign is also intended to produce marketing materials that can populate a consolidated Visit Clearlake web presence and an events packet for prospective organizers.

Details of the plan: the chair described a repeatable one‑hour monthly meeting format plus modest homework and said the group will "guide organizers along that journey from ideation of the event to the actual event itself." Members will grade candidate events on three criteria — city workload, impact to the community and economic viability — and use that grading to select a single event to target in the six‑month window.

Assignments and immediate tasks: the committee agreed to a homework exercise. Members must rate the compiled list of events using a grading spreadsheet that the chair will circulate; responses are to be returned through Melissa, who will sort submissions and work with Tina and Alan to produce a ranked short list for the next meeting. In addition, members were asked to prepare short (roughly 30‑word) descriptions of assigned venues, noting capacity and suitable event types to help package venues for organizers.

Website and content: a committee member reported there is no single, consolidated Visit Clearlake site and said some relevant domains were unavailable; others suggested the problem is primarily a lack of centralized content, not technology. "We don't have a website problem. We have a lack of content problem," the chair said. Members discussed consolidating existing county and chamber content or embedding it into a focused Visit Clearlake page to reduce workload.

Funding and next steps: during closing remarks a member stated that Bruno had offered $100,000 to support committee work; the transcript contains no further detail about that pledge, including whether it is committed funds or subject to approval. The chair said he would circulate the spreadsheet and slides, members will complete their grading and venue descriptions in the coming week, and staff will prepare a March workshop to evaluate and prioritize events. The meeting was then adjourned.

The agenda to accept the meeting as presented passed at the start of the session by voice vote.