Come Sleepover in Detroit
Foot traffic around Downtown Detroit has undoubtedly increased since this Free Press issue was published in the last week of 1984. Personally, during the previous seven years I’ve noticed a gradual-then-at-all-once increase in the amount of people Downtown, in Corktown and Midtown and to a lesser extent in select neighborhood business corridors like West Village and along Livernois Avenue. The last handful of years, the amount of development and increased population density in a few of the neighborhoods (so far I hope) is staggering when you look at it on a map over a timeline.
In 2012, you could shoot a rocket up Woodward from Campus Martius after 7 pm and not risk hitting a soul.
The population of the city is stabilizing and by some accounts growing for the first time since the 1950s, but with 139 square miles and a population hovering around just around 700,000 (1.8 million at the peak), it’s safe to say there is room to bring people in, be it for a weekend or forever. People that can visit Detroit’s ever-growing list of small businesses thanks in part to the work of organizations like Build Institute (shout out April Boyle and her team) and funding opportunities like Motor City Match. (shout out James Edward Feagin, and whoever came up with the idea of using community block grant dollars to fund small businesses; shout out to them too)
People who can visit and come back again and maybe again and maybe they find a job here, perhaps they buy a house, maybe they start a business.
I was a visitor in 2011 — I’ve done all of these things here.
My Detroit origin story is as old as time. It goes I met a girl from Detroit; the girl didn’t love me back, but Detroit did.
Disclaimer
There is no single solution on how to increase the daily population of Detroit, and it is equally essential that the city government, philanthropy and large employers work together to help Detroit residents and small business owners, stay here.
In particular, the rising rents for both residential and commercial property due in significant part to speculators; and the Wayne County Tax Auction — notification and foreclosure procedures need serious consideration.
My motivation in writing this post is to flush out ideas on how to (1) increase the number of visits to Detroit, (2) diversify where in Detroit people visit and spend their money, (3) and engage visitors towards repeat visits while exposing them to ongoing opportunities for spending and investment.
City tourism statistics are an excellent place to start: The consensus around the data online is that about 16 million people visit Metro Detroit annually, spending an estimated $4.8 billion. Now, this is not just Detroit City limits but let’s give Detroit credit for it and compare it to another major city across Lake Michigan, Chicago, which has 55 million tourist visits or even smaller cities like St. Louis, Missouri with 22 million. There is room for growth in tourism, and every visit to Detroit is X return for the city. In moderation and with consideration to those who may get left out of this equation — visitors: whether they buy a coney dog or a brick Tudor in East English Village, it’s a net positive for the city.
I believe there is an opportunity over time to help the city see exponential growth in the number of visits per year, but we have to account for three barriers: perception (what people think of when they think of Detroit) conversion (how do you reduce the burden in getting them to Detroit to visit) and engagement (what do they do when they are here that will make them want to come back.) Here is how I would start to get around these barriers:
Perception
DET Welcome Committee — We look to New York City for a benchmark here with their long-standing Big Apple Greeters program, matching volunteer residents to visitors who want to engage with someone local. The organization is intentional about selecting volunteers from various backgrounds so someone can link up with an artist or a musician or a long-time resident for their perspective on the city. There are ways to modernize and better the aesthetic of what NYC is doing, but they are the right entity from which to learn.
Layered on top of the volunteer foundation is a modest media infrastructure; a network of local independent contractors, supplying media and content about Detroit experiences to and through Welcome Committee. This is functionally not different than how most online media companies work. Most of the high-production quality content you see online is submitted by contractors, purchased and distributed out under that companies brand.
Content is king in this case because we have to fight lousy narrative with good. Detroit has a bad rap online. Meanwhile, according to Google Keyword Planner, there are more than 300,000 people each month searching ‘visiting-Detroit’ related terms. These are people showing intent to visit however passively, and we would be wise to showcase the city better than this, for example:
Capturing existing search traffic is low hanging fruit from a marketing perspective. There is virtually no competition for keyword advertising on these terms. You can pay under .10 cents a clickthrough in some cases. Not that you’d have to do much advertising as organic search optimization and a good syndication strategy with local and National outlets would do most of the work for you.
Conversion
Sleepover Detroit — So you’ve got their attention. They’ve been hearing Detroit was on the ‘comeback’ and maybe now is the time for them. The benchmark here is Philadelphia with their Philly Overnight campaign and web platform. This organization is leveraging dormant inventory from their local hotels to drive down prices and create custom packages, making it cheaper and a little more interesting to visit. They then advertise the campaign targeting people regionally and online. In the case of Detroit:
46 million people are living within 300 miles of the city. Targeting these people on Facebook and other select media platforms is no magic trick these days.
Hotels already work with the likes of Priceline or Orbitz to monetize their unused rooms, these vendors taking upwards of 40% of the room cost in commission. Except here, you work with the hotels to block a certain number of rooms with the exception of specific high volume dates like the Auto Show or the Movement Festival. You procure a drastically reduced rate in place of commission. You also collaborate on packages exclusively for Sleepover Detroit and use those as partial fodder for content in the advertising campaign. One could also expand on what Philadelphia has done by creating a sub-network of inventory within the Airbnb marketplace. As of this date, Detroit has more than 2000 listings on Airbnb — plenty of underutilized space on any number of calendar dates just sitting there.
Engagement
One Day In Detroit — Detroiter Designed Detroit Experiences
This concept is something I worked on years ago as a side project with Jerry Paffendorf from Loveland Technologies and the late Tim Smith from Skidmore Studio. (Tim was an exceptionally nice guy, always very kind to me and fervently passionate about the city.)
Picture a simple mobile website where you can create say 3–7 custom Detroit tour stops with text-based commentary. Maybe you have an audio option where people can upload themselves talking about why they love a particular place, and each stop has directions to the next. Another feature might be, and this wasn’t possible when we first looked at the concept, but today you could build in an application interface to Uber and Lyft that would allow people to price out and reserve transportation for any given tour.
The way you market the site is by engaging high profile Detroiters and Expatriates. What would Big Sean’s One Day In Detroit be, for example? Steve Yzerman’s; Jack White’s; Smokey Robinson’s, Eminem? Also, and I loathe using this word, but it’s part of the broader lexicon now, one could also engage ‘influencers’ to place their handle: onedayin.detroit/JaneSmith on their Instagram and Facebook profile. The network effects would be evident in short order, and you’d make accessible to people experiences that would bring them more often outside the downtown corridor. Plus, once they’ve registered on the site, you have an email address where you can send them ongoing incentives to return and spend or invest.
According to a Crain’s article, the Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau, spend approximately 3 million dollars per year on marketing, and seemingly, they are doing a good job. Convention bookings are on track to increase to 140% from 2014 to 2021, and there has been an 83% increase in Google searches of “things to do in Detroit” over past three years, but I say there is more to do and all three of the concepts outlined in broad strokes here; designed, built, and staffed could operate on a third of that budget.
Who out there wants to work together on some variation of these initial ideas or has ideas of their own?
Thanks for taking the time to read this,
@jasonmileslorimer
