Beach Party a Test of ‘Cool’ Tourism Strategy

When the California Beach Party opens this morning, Ventura tourism officials will be there, clipboards in hand.

One thing they want to know: How many people from California’s hot inland valleys turned out for a cool stroll along the promenade?

The event, and a major powerboat race next weekend, will test the city’s new marketing strategy and advertising campaign, intended to draw the tourism season into the autumn and sell Ventura’s cool temperatures to the hottest places.

“We are strong through Labor Day, but then [tourism] dies,” said Debbie Solomon, the city’s public affairs coordinator. “But as a coastal city, we realized that our strongest suit is the fall season.”

The Beach Party, a sun-and-surf festival that was moved from its traditional April slot this year, has been marketed heavily in the state’s arid climes.

“Our policy has been to advertise when it is over 100 degrees in places like Bakersfield, Palmdale and San Bernardino,” she said.

After spending close to $5 million sprucing up downtown, the city granted its Visitors and Convention Bureau $100,000 this year to tell people about it.

The bureau used the money to work with an advertising company, Ahlman & Associates, to come up with a snazzy slogan that captures the essence of Ventura.

“We didn’t want to say, ‘Have you been to Ventura lately, it looks a lot better than it used to?’ But that’s really what we were trying to get across,” said visitors bureau Director Bill Clawson.

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After much debate, the city and the ad firm settled on: “Ventura: The cooler place.”

“The concept is you can use it in the summer, when you are talking literally, and then there’s the double meaning all the time--that we are a cooler, hipper place,” Clawson said.

Any day now, huge 12- by 48-foot billboards hawking Ventura will start hitting Southland freeways. The peach-and-purple signs will show a rickety fan juxtaposed with a sunset view of a sailboat skimming across the water. The alluring image reads: “The cooler place. 1-800-4 Ventura.”

The bureau also plans to put out a booklet in the next month listing Ventura’s 50 coolest places. Right now the visitors bureau staff is out prowling downtown and the harbor in search of cool.

If chosen, restaurants, hotels and other commercial establishments will pay $195 to be listed. Public cool spots, like Surfers Point, will also be listed.

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Sitting in an office cluttered with brochures and posters, Clawson holds up the newest promotional image.

“You’re in Bakersfield. You’re at home. You’ve got this,” he says, pointing to the old fan. “Or there’s this.” He points to the Hobey and smiles.

It’s too early to tell, but efforts to entice people from the parched inland areas look like they will pay off. The first test will be Bakersfield.

When it comes to tourism, Bakersfield is Ventura’s No. 1 growth market.

“It’s hot, it’s close and it’s a place people want to get out of,” Clawson said.

In August and September alone, Ventura spent $25,000 on radio, shopping center and TV ads in Bakersfield and the nearby Antelope Valley. Clawson expects to spend another $100,000 in the region from the fall through next spring.

From Aug. 26 through this weekend, the visitors bureau has set up a huge display in Bakersfield’s Valley Plaza, California’s largest single-level enclosed shopping mall. The display boasted a sailboat and mannequins dressed in California Beach Party garb.

Mall-goers could enter a lottery to win free California Beach Party tickets (15 sets), a free weekend in Ventura (20 sets) or a weekend in Ventura for the California Beach Party (the two grand prizes). KKXX-FM (105.3), a local radio station, trumpeted Ventura’s message and announced winners daily.

Sheri Sherrer, an account executive with KKXX, said the promos have been a huge success and expects quite a few people to head to Ventura this weekend. She said Bakersfield residents are creatures of habit who traditionally vacation in Pismo Beach, in the same places their parents went. But the Ventura ad blitz has opened their eyes.

“I don’t think they understood what Ventura was,” Sherrer said. “I think they thought it was part of L.A.”

Now they know. Ventura is closer than Pismo Beach, the water is warmer and you can get a tan here.

Sherrer herself took her husband, a Pismo loyalist, to Ventura.

“He doesn’t want to go to the other beach now,” she said.