St. Louis - Who Owns Our Story?

St. Louis, February 15, 2022 - Today, as St. Louis celebrates its 258th birthday, we want to share some thoughts on how the community can practice a little self love by owning their story. St. Louis has grown and changed a lot since Pierre Laclede and Auguste Chouteau founded this place they named after Louis IX of France.

St. Louis is a wonderful community that has recently struggled to keep pace with the rest of the world. Within the last half century, metro areas that were once smaller than the St. Louis metropolitan area have grown well past the St. Louis region.?Today, many other regions are growing faster than St. Louis.

While St. Louis is a wonderful community, it is stagnating because of a lack regional leadership. The region is divided.?Problems go unsolved because of a lack of collective responsibility. It is within this context that the region doesn't take ownership of its story.

While the region has amazing stories to tell, it is failing to share them.?For the region to grow and prosper, it needs to own its story and get STORYSMART? with their approach to connecting with audiences.

The following is an outline of the problem and a back of napkin plan for the #STL region to own its story.

Who owns the story of St. Louis?

It sounds like a simple question.?You could say everyone within the region does. While that is true, that does not allow the community to get our arms around it from a responsibility standpoint. When you are talking about a region of 2.7 million people, saying we all own the story doesn’t empower the region to take full ‘ownership’ in a very practical way.??

At STORYSMART?, when we say “ownership” we mean both taking responsibility and owning the intellectual property of your story. So, really agency and copyright.

St. Louis is failing that ownership test on both accounts.

The practical reality is that no one owns the regional story because no one organization has been assigned that responsibility. Residents have no way of holding leaders accountable until they designate some organization to do the daily work that is needed to be done in a digitally driven world.

Other regions are resourcing the branding of their community. They are controlling their narrative in practical, creative and digitally relevant ways that St. Louis is not.

St. Louis should get STORYSMART? about their story.??

No problem gets solved unless someone takes ownership of it and is held accountable for solving it.

Residents and other stakeholders owe it to themselves to make some organization or some loosely-knit federation of organizations responsible for sharing the region's stories. St. Louis should use the best practices of other communities as a guide as they structure their approach in a transparent and inclusive way that allows them to be accountable to themselves. That is not an easy task even for a high functioning community, but St. Louis needs to figure out quickly or they will continue to lose ground to more digitally savvy communities.

Let’s start by asking a few practical questions.

Who is responsible for our region's marketing and communications?

The short answer is no one organization owns this responsibility right now.?St. Louis has several organizations that play a role, but no one really “owns” it outright.

To illustrate our point, I'll tell you a story about a time when I worked as the chief communications officer of the?St. Louis Cardinals.? I found himself urgently asking that very question (i.e. who is in charge of marketing & communications for our region?).

It was near the end of the calendar year when John Mozeliak, the team’s GM, popped into my office to make a request.

Mo wanted the communications department to produce a video that would tell the story of what it would be like to play baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals and what it was like to live in the St. Louis region. The video would have a target audience of one – a talented free agent who had never played in or visited STL.

My group had 48 hours to turn the story and embed the video on an iPad that Mo could take with him to make a recruitment pitch to the player. While Mo wouldn’t tell me who the player was, I quickly deduced it was David Price.

I initially felt that the video team would knock the story out of the park. Our team had everything we needed to tell the story of playing for the team. We had high-quality video footage of Opening Day, ample footage of postseason baseball, champaign covered teammates and amazing fans who adore players. We could easily check that box.

I also assumed that within a few quick calls we would have access to high quality video footage of what it would be like to live in St. Louis.?

I had a rolodex list of folks I could reach on speed dial that would take my call and who should be able to help our hometown team with video or photos.

It wasn’t until I started to call around town that I realized that no one organization was responsible for telling the story of the St. Louis region. Nobody really “owned” the regional story. Each organization I called referred my to another organization in our region saying it was outside their scope of responsibility.?

“If not you, then who?”?he would ask.

Brian Hall of?Explore Saint Louis?(the St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission) was my best resource.? Brian was responsive and helpful.

Brian shared great footage, but most of what he had was focused on the visitors’ experience, not a person living in the region. We were provided footage of the Zoo, Fox Theater, Cardinals games etc. It was certainly helpful, but it was not everything I needed to show what it would be like to live here.??

I wanted footage that showed the diversity of our region. We wanted to showcase all the livability elements St. Louisans love. You know what I mean. Dinner in the Loop, coffee in CWE, a visit to wine country, a stroll down Main Street in St. Charles, and the vast array of outdoor recreational opportunities minutes from your front door etc.??

We wanted video of kids playing in the street of a variety of subdivisions, beautiful aerial footage of Ferguson, Alton, Kirkwood, Webster, High Ridge, Belleville etc. We wanted to paint a visual picture and tell a visual story in a highly relevant way - quickly.

We wanted to deliver the message that a wealthy young player could make his money go far in STL while enjoying any lifestyle he chooses. A star player could buy an amazing loft downtown or a thousand acre farm close to the ballpark for so much less than anything he could buy in New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles.

The best way to convey that simple message is to show it. Quickly.??

I spoke with the head of the?St. Louis Economic Development Partnership?to see if she had any video footage or photographs we could use for our project. She said the Partnership did not have a library of digital assets. She told me that video was too expensive for the partnership. The Partnership didn’t have the resources to invest in video storytelling and that was really outside the scope of their responsibility. The Partnership CEO suggested that I contact the?Regional Chamber & Growth Association (RCGA).

I had a similar conversation with RCGA. They didn’t have much to offer.

If not you, then who??

What I learned then was that no one was really responsible for telling the regional story or providing a business like the St. Louis Cardinals some practical things to help with recruiting a high value free agent or any other sought after employee.?? While understandable, it was unfortunate no one was responsible for making such resources available to a business recruiting talent to the region.

Employers and other institutions like universities are the ones recruiting new residents to our community. We should be armed with practical digital tools we can use to recruit an employee to our region.

Today you are just one google search away from someone else telling your story. The region should own its own story and take responsibility for sharing it.

Some organization should be responsible for providing practical recruitment assets like templated power point slides, fact sheets, beautiful photographs and b-roll video to help those in the trenches making the case for relocating to the community. Someone should be accountable for helping sell living here.

It doesn't cost much to make these practical and tactical assets available. The region could afford to invest $10K a year for great drone footage from around our 15 county region, as well as $20-30K annually on stock video and photos. St. Louis should build and annually update a digital library of photos and video we make readily available. We live in era where more media is produced by the masses than mass media, so it would benefit us to make these resources easily available to the world of creators.

St. Louis would have success asking local video companies and photographers to share rights free images and video. The bottom line is St. Louis should make those assets readily available through services like Canva, stock image houses etc. so that we are always putting our best foot forward visually.

Making good images easily available for free is a good practice from a practical standpoint. Even if some journalist writes a story that isn’t favorable to your city, you benefit if they use a good image. And vice versa. A favorable story with a bad photo isn’t as good as a favorable story with an awesome image.???Pretty pictures matter.??

Remember that media today is different than the past.?

Search drives media consumption.?News and information is on demand. You don't have to call the local librarian any more.?

When you are interested in learning more about the St. Louis region you google it.??

It doesn’t matter if you are a baseball free agent, a c-suite prospect and the spouse of someone considering relocating to our region. We are all the same thing.??When we want to learn something, we grab our phone and do a quick search.??

What is St. Louis doing every day to drive search results?

Search is why everyone should own their own story. What pops up when you search? You can help define that by owning your storytelling.

Okay, so we have established that no organization has really taken full ownership of being the marketing and communications arm responsible for telling the story of St. Louis.

Now the next question is who owns the intellectual property rights of St. Louis?

The Judy Garland movie “Meet Me in St. Louis” is a classic. The 1944 movie tells the story of the Smith family around the time of the 1904 World’s Fair - a period of time St. Louisans love to reminisce about.

If we asked you who owns that movie, you would say MGM right? What about the music in it? Judy Garland’s image?

Copyrights and trademarks matter. Each of us has a right of publicity. Each of us owns our name, image and likeness (NIL rights). No one can sell a bobble head of you without your consent. No one can sell a coffee mug with your mug on it without your consent. That makes sense right?

You are likely aware that the US Supreme Court recently ruled that college athletes not only own their NIL rights, but they may monetize them. College athletes can have sponsorship deals now.???

We believe intellectual property rights are an important consideration today when it comes to sharing stories.

STORYSMART? is built upon the idea that you should own your story while also having it told professionally. When we say #OwnYourStory we mean both “take responsibility for telling it” (i.e. agency) and “retain your intellectual property rights” (i.e. copyright).

With that in mind, we ask?who is paying attention to making the most of our region’s intellectual property rights?

If someone wants to use a city mark to sell a t-shirt, is the city making any money?

New York does.

If you buy a NYPD Lego patrol car for your son at the airport like I did for my son on a visit to NYC, Lego paid a license fee that eventually goes back to the taxpayers of New York.?Check out the?NYC & Company Foundation.

NYC & Company has a licensing division that is a licensing agent for a variety of city IP brokering deals with the likes of Nike, Lego or others.

St. Louis should be doing something similar to control use and generate revenue.

Some city icons like the Gateway Arch or the Statue of St. Louis on Art Hill are in the public domain, but other things like a city or county logo are likely not. If someone wants to sell a t-shirt with the St. Louis County crest or county police logo on it, the taxpayers should get a cut. Same goes for Belleville or St. Charles or one of our O’Fallons.

St. Louis should be selling swag. Every community should. It fosters a sense of belonging and creates a revenue stream. It also gets your branding out there.

It makes more sense to license professional sellers who know retail to try to do the work of selling it yourself. Under Armor knows more about what sells than any committee St. Louis politicians would be able to assemble. The community's role would be to license them or other companies to sell the city swag. St. Louis can get a small cut of the pie the same way every MLB team gets a cut when you buy a Yankees or Cardinals cap

The practical reality is that if St. Louis were organized and intentional about their approach, they could create revenue streams to help support their ongoing regional marketing.??

For what it is worth, I don’t believe public officials have this on their radar. It isn't how elected officials typically think, but they should.

For what it is worth, I see the real value in owning the copyright on your story is being able to share your story easily. Today it all about the shareable link. Media reaches audiences by being shared and re-shared digitally.

If St. Louis produced a great video story about an amazing new start-up company, St. Louis could share it themselves while also giving it to the start-up company to share with their community. It is the sharing process that builds audience. Each social post or email is the modern media equivalent of the old school marketing and communications model. And it feeds search.

Let’s say you are kitchen and bath contractor. The best way to get the next customer is to tell the story about how you helped a current customer. If you tell the story about how you helped Mrs. Smith (played by Judy Garland in this example) build the kitchen of her dreams, you can share it on your website and social media. But the real opportunity comes when you give the story to Mrs. Smith to share on her social media.

Guess where your new customers will come from??Mrs. Smith’s Facebook followers. It is as though you hired Judy Garland as your spokesperson.

Now let us illustrate the old school approach as an example.

Suppose St. Louis pitched the story to a reporter from the?Post-Dispatch?or?St. Louis Business Journal do a story about that start-up, the news outlet would own the copyright on that story. St. Louis would not be able to share it easily with others or with the start-up. When St. Louis would go to share the story, everyone who clicks the story link would get a subscriber pay wall.

It is hard for a story to go viral if everyone must subscribe to see it. The old school model just doesn’t work that well any more.

I don’t mean to pick on traditional media. It is what it is. Media outlets are businesses themselves. They need to pay for what they do by selling advertising or selling their publication.?You buy the paper. You watch ads when you watch the TV news.?There is nothing wrong with any of that until you think through the practical approaches you can take to reach your target audience today.

As a region, St. Louis needs to be thinking through these practical realities when developing their strategy. If St. Louis wants to compete it must take ownership of its story.?That means St. Louis should be producing and sharing their own stories on line in a world driven by search and social media.??

St. Louis should share those stories digitally in a way that they show up with a simple search. St. Louis should make the stories easy to find and share. Connecting with a target audience comes down to storytelling, smart metadata tagging and good SEO practices.

St. Louis also needs to share those stories and raw assets with those handling communications and marketing at local companies. They are out there every day connecting with audiences.?

A Free Back of Napkin Plan For St. Louis To Own Their Story

St. Louis should own its own story. Here is how. Key stakeholder organizations like?Explore St. Louis,?Alliance STL,?Greater STL?work together with the city of St. Louis and the 14 other counties that make up our region to establish a non-profit foundation akin to NYC & Company (ex. STL & Company).

We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, we simply need to collaborate and coordinate. Explore St. Louis owns visitor marketing. Alliance STL owns the business marketing. How do we bring the government entities into the mix?

The region has a privately funded?#STLMade marketing effort?already underway with?thestl.com. They are spending over a million in private money for the #STLmade content marketing effort. That private effort by the business community could be combined with some of the taxpayer media creation entities like?HEC Media?and?STL TV.?

HEC Media?is essentially the local cable access channel of St. Louis County Government that was initially established as the St. Louis County Cable TV Public Education Commission on March 27, 1981 with a 2% tax on gross receipts of a cable revenue for residents in unincorporated St. Louis County.

STL TV?is the city local cable access channel that was established when the city granted the right of way to bring cable TV to residents.?

St. Charles County?has their version too.? Each local community has their own.

These little noticed but highly relevant organizations draw their funding from taxes paid on cable tv. They were established when local governments awarded cable tv franchises back in the day. They essentially granted public right of way access to bring MTV to families back in the 1980s.

I don’t think our public officials are paying much attention to these entities any more, but they should since it was established with a public purpose and are funded by tax dollars. Many of these taxpayer funded media outlets are producing high quality storytelling. HEC is a perfect example. They have a budget over $1.5 million annually. They do wonderful work using a network of freelance journalists.

We suspect that the leaders of the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership don't even realize that HEC Media is also part of county government and could help tell the story of some of the Partnership’s economic development efforts.?

We would recommend establishing a foundation – call it?STL & Company?that functions akin to NYC & Company. Use it to collaborate & coordinate. Use it to be the vehicle to make the most of St. Louis' intellectual property by setting up a licensing process. Use it has a vehicle to build a digital library of assets like photographs, logos and videos that can be shared with others. Use it as a vehicle to develop a strategy around storytelling that uses our shared resources wisely (ex. HEC TV, STL TV, #STLMade etc.)

Most importantly use it as vehicle to own your story St. Louis. It is the perfect gift to yourself as you celebrate your 258th!???

--Ron Watermon, Founder & CEO STORYSMART?

ABOUT STORYSMART?

STORYSMART? is a premium documentary filmmaking and cinematic storytelling consulting service that enables discerning clients to have their stories produced in a cinematic way by professional filmmakers while retaining their intellectual property rights. The company specializes in helping public figures and brands control their storytelling with Hollywood-Quality storytelling through filmmaking in the same way a professional ghostwriting service helps those interested in maintaining control of their story through print publishing. Learn more at storysmart.net