Depending on when you started reading this blog it may or may not be obvious to you that it’s an experimental and constantly evolving work-in-progress.

When I started the blog in August of ‘06, I had no idea what I was doing. I knew that I wanted to begin a dialog and I knew I wanted to build an audience but I didn’t know how. So I repurposed articles and book excerpts that I had written for other publications, posted interesting essays friends of mine had written, and even uploaded articles I found on the web that I thought people would enjoy reading (with attribution and links to the original, of course).

Eventually I tired of just being a clearinghouse for other people’s ideas and my musty old ones and started writing fresh commentary on what I know best: advertising and branding. Because I was writing for a business audience (or so I thought) and because I was writing for a business purpose, I tried to keep my articles proper and professional without becoming pedantic. I’ve written about Toyota’s recall faux pas, rebranding the Republican Party and a number of articles about how the hotels and destinations of the Southern Coast could attract tourists during and after BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster.

While the size of my audience slowly increased, I didn’t get much more than a handful of comments on each post. That changed when I wrote about Michael Jordan sporting a Hitleresque mustache in a Hanes commercial. That controversial post sparked a number of responses as well as a record number of unsubscribers. Perhaps people felt passionately about the issue or perhaps it was the power of controversy, but that post was the first time TurkelTalks went from being a monologue to a conversation.

Then one afternoon, not thinking about the blog at all, I sat at my laptop and wrote about a personal issue, as much to think it through and get it off my mind as to memorialize it. Because I was running a “professional” blog, I had no intention of posting this personal essay. But as my deadline got closer and closer and no other interesting subjects came to mind, I finally opted for expediency and uploaded my more intimate comments to the web.

Much to my surprise, that post generated more interesting responses and conversation than anything I had written before. So the next week I tried another experiment and posted another personal essay. Again the essay got more positive response than any of the work-related posts had received.

Through time and continued experimentation, with one eye on the text and one eye on the metrics, my essays evolved into a blend of personal comments and observations, usually leading to a personal conclusion about a timely marketing or branding issue. I even started to feel like I was finding my voice.

So imagine my surprise when I read an article in Saturday’s New York Times on the 16th-century French nobleman and essayist Michel de Montaigne. The article explains how Montaigne is “considered the creator of the essay, a form that melds the intellectual and the personal, and his musings have inspired countless writers including…Friedrich Nietzsche and Virginia Woolf.”

In her biography of Michel de Montaigne, How to Live, Sarah Bakewell goes on to add that Montaigne has also influenced “every blogger, tweeter, Facebooker and YouTuber…” even though it’s safe to assume that few of them have ever heard of Montaigne or read his essays.

Ms. Bakewell says that Montaigne’s form “…writing about oneself to create a mirror in which other people recognize their own humanity – has not existed forever. It had to be invented.” Certainly an erudite and thoughtful description of what my blog has evolved to, but accurate just the same.

What’s most interesting to me is that Montaigne sussed out this whole blogging thing all the way back in 1580. That means that if I were more up to speed on my 16th-century French literature, and had actually read anything by Montaigne, I wouldn’t have had to figure it all out for myself. Or as Michael Keaton’s character, Bill Blazejowski, blurts out in the movie Night Shift, “Yeah, I invented it first. But they already had it.”

After almost every punch line, a googly-eyed, sweating Rodney Dangerfield would tug at his tie and utter his famous line, “Awww, I don’t get no respect.”

Seems to me the entire travel and tourism industry could do the same thing. Tourism is a trade that encompasses so many different business sectors but has no single defining industry designation, and therefore, has no real way of demonstrating its value to the greater community.

Check the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) and you’ll find listings for Air Transportation; Aircraft-Aerospace Manufacturing; Amusement and Recreation; Fishing, Hunting, and Trapping; Food Preparations and Food Specialties; Hotel and Restaurant; Museums, Art Galleries, and Botanical and Zoological Gardens; and the Railroad Transportation Industries – all listed as separate sectors. And that list doesn’t even include limousines, cruise lines, sporting events, nor all of tourism’s supporting industries such as Legal, Accounting, HR, Real Estate, Retail, etc., etc., etc. Yet every one of those businesses owes some or all of its success to tourism.

Funny how things change in times of trouble, though. Now that BP is dolling out money to companies whose businesses have suffered due to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, it seems every business that might have ever received a dollar from a tourist’s wallet has its hand out for relief. Watching the evening news the other day, I saw a gas station owner from Palatka complaining that BP owed him money because tourists have stopped driving down to Florida. Even the Brass Monkey Lounge in Marathon filed a lawsuit against BP for diminished business.

As Judy Sorenson, owner of the bar, said in The Miami Herald, “It‘s still beautiful here, but people aren’t coming because they think the oil is here, even though it isn’t here. That’s killing the Keys.”

Maybe so, Judy; but it ain’t killing bars. The last thing people in the Keys are going to give up is booze. In fact, I’d bet that the worse the situation gets, the more they’ll drink.

Regardless of the economic realities, our tourism industry will keep stoking the economy – providing jobs, generating taxes and showing people the best parts of the United States, all without getting the respect it deserves. It’s so bad that even Rodney Dangerfield used to diss our industry: “Boy, what a hotel that was, why they stole MY towel! Then I asked the bellhop to handle my bag and he fondled my wife.”

I’m tellin’ you, we don’t get no respect.

Besides having a problem with their Deepwater Horizon well spewing oil into the Gulf Stream, BP also seems to have a problem with its executives spewing insensitive statements into the media stream.

First, embattled BP CEO Tony Hayward told a disbelieving press “I’d like to get my life back.” Talk about irony. As the words spilled from his lips, did Hayward even consider the eleven workers who were killed on the oil rig, all the people on the shore who make their livelihoods from the beach and the sea or even the pelicans, manatees and other creatures destined for an oily death?

Then BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg set off another public outcry when he told the world he was frustrated because “we care about the small people.” Of course he was quick to apologize for his gaff and his PR team explained that because Svanberg is from Sweden, English isn’t the chairman’s first language. They also tried some convoluted explanation about the British use of the word “small” which apparently doesn’t have the same meaning as it does in the US.

Pshaw.

Those of you who know me know that one of my favorite pastimes is playing harmonica with my R&B band at bars, festivals, and parties. Often someone will approach us, tell us they’re musicians too and ask if they can sit in with the band. Before long we’re playing Pink Cadillac or Johnny Be Good or some other rock standard with our guest performer singing the lyrics or playing the guitar lead (no, I don’t lend my harmonicas to strangers in bars).

Most of the time the folks who play with us are good, sometimes they’re great and once in a blue moon they’re superstars (remind me to tell you about the time a heavily disguised Van Morrison sang “Born Under A Bad Sign” with us).

But sometimes our guests are not so good. Which is fine, too, because people who try hard and are gracious still have a good time and make it fun for their friends in the audience. It’s the ones who are can’t play and don’t know it that really toast my onions. They’re the angry sorts who insist that the guitar is out of tune, the drummer missed the beat or the band is playing too fast.

Just as Dean Vernon Wormer told Flounder in Animal House, “…drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son,” incompetent AND arrogant is a bad combination whether you’re sitting in with a bar band or running a multi-national oil company. The only difference is when the incompetent and arrogant performers are done playing their songs they get off the stage. We are going to be stuck with BP for a long time coming.

It’s been almost five weeks since the Deepwater Horizon disaster and barrels of oil continue to pour out of a broken pipe 5,000 feet below the ocean’s surface.

“Green” BP is trying to stave off a PR disaster, red-faced politicians are playing to the cameras and people in the seafood and tourism businesses are wondering how they’re going to make their mortgage payments.

But not everyone’s upset about what’s going on.

When was the last time you saw an article about Toyota’s unintended acceleration problem or their subsequent loss of brand value and sales? How about the Upper Big Branch mine explosion in West Virginia? Just a month and a half ago Massey Energy was the most hated company in the US and now both the company and chief executive Don Blakenship are about as well known as Rush Limbaugh’s third wife.

Here in the US, our attention spans are short and our memories are even shorter. Thanks to WiFi, our slavish dedication to our handheld devices, and up-to-the-minute programs such as Facebook and Twitter, we’re aware of everything that’s happening right now but have no recollection of what happened before.

People, we’ve been lied to… information isn’t power, it’s overwhelming. And it turns us into metaphorical asphalt – miles wide but inches deep.

The green revolution in Iran? Old news.

The earthquake in Haiti? Didn’t they fix that already?

Goldman Sachs? Yawn.

When the only thing that gets our attention is whatever just happened, nothing will matter for long. And for tomorrow’s marketers, Andy Warhol’s “fifteen minutes of fame” will seem like a lifetime.

Right now the oil moving inexorably towards our coastline is on everybody’s mind. The media has created the 24-hour news feed, the battle lines have been drawn between BP and the pelicans, and consumers are hanging onto the edges of their seats for the next update.

The consequences of this tragedy, perhaps the largest domestic environmental crises to date, will go on for decades. But what happens when the next great new event pushes the Deepwater Horizon off the front pages? What will be the long-lasting effects to the beachfront tourism industry from Texas to Florida and beyond?

Do you think the issue won’t go away that quickly? When was the last time you were glued to your TV to find out about conditions in Haiti, the Time-Square bomb scare or even health care reform? We Americans have a notoriously short attention span and when the media moves on, we do too.

Of course you know that just because the situation doesn’t make front-page headlines anymore doesn’t mean that everything is better. Far from it. Post earthquake-damaged Haiti is still the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and suffers from every possible ill of poverty, a non-existent infrastructure and aggressively corrupt leadership; it’s just that we’re not so actively involved anymore. Out of sight, out of mind is not just a glib saying; it’s an accurate description of our national attention deficit syndrome.

So maybe the cameras moving on to the next subject will be a good thing for tourism. After all, if pictures of gooey petroleum-soaked seabirds aren’t on our TV screens 24/7, visitors might forget about the oil and rebook their vacations. On the other hand, what happens if oil-fouled beaches are the last things consumers see before the cameras leave and there are no inviting images to change that perception?

As I wrote in my last post, the solution is not to tell people the reasons why they shouldn’t not come but instead to build compelling stories that connect with consumers’ emotions and build desire. I’m still waiting to see those campaigns from the affected destinations. Let’s hope they’re coming soon.

So many gulf coast beach destinations are telling consumers that their beaches AREN’T fouled that I can’t help but wonder how robust their businesses must have been before the oil spill.

As I recall, a prolonged recession, increased competition, reduced consumer confidence and many other reasons had already softened most of the destinations’ business. Why is it then that they feel that by just announcing “We don’t have greasy beaches yet” the consumers will arrive in droves? Since when was telling people the reasons why they shouldn’t not come considered good marketing?

Eat here, our restaurant isn’t dirty.

Drive our car, it’s not unsafe.

Wear our jeans, they don’t make you look fat.

Thanks to Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, even most politicians have learned that defending a negative doesn’t work:

“I am not a crook.”

“I did not have sex with that woman.”

Saying “we don’t have oil” or the positive version – issuing “clean-beach guarantees” – is more of the same – telling people why they shouldn’t not come. Instead, thoughtful messaging for the near future (and for the next several months) is critical, particularly in markets that were hurting before anyone ever heard of the Deepwater Horizon.

The good news is that an opportunity actually exists in this crisis that shouldn’t be missed. Resort areas should seize the opportunity to highlight their strongest selling points and not just make the beaches look inviting. Negative perceptions have already been developed even if there isn’t oil on the coast of Florida, yet many tourists pick their destinations for reasons beyond the beach. And with all eyes on the region, now is the perfect time to show those eyes what they’re missing. At least the positive parts.

Since the tragic oil spill began I’ve been inundated by reporters wanting to know how much money various gulf coast communities will have to spend to repair their tourism industries. Paradoxically, I believe the question is not how much should be spent but what happens if we don’t spend?

Traditionally the knee-jerk response of large organizations such as the Federal Government and BP is to throw big money at big problems. So figuring out how much to spend might be as irrelevant as it is incalculable. Instead, let’s look at the reasons why this money has to be spent.

The tourism industry has done such a bad job of promoting its business benefits that most people do not understand the impact of tourism. Travelers spend money in more than just hotels and attractions; they are directly responsible for enormous purchases of entertainment, retail, real estate, professional services and most every other industry’s products. But because there is no one SKU number that covers the impact of tourism, as you would find in health care or chemicals say, no one really knows the value of the industry.

Besides the immediate purchase power of tourism, the industry also has an enormous influence on a community’s business growth. Most forward thinking cities and regions have their own economic development offices charged with bringing new business, investment and ultimately jobs to their communities. If you talk to the people charged with attracting business to their area, they’ll tell you that tourism is the front door of economic development. After all, no one moves their business to a community they haven’t visited.

But perhaps most vital, tourism helps create our positive views of people and countries in faraway places. Tourism also helps people who visit us go home with improved visions of America and Americans. According to a 2006 survey by RT Strategies, people who have visited the U.S. are 74 percent more likely to have a favorable opinion of our country. Or, as Mark Twain wrote over 140 years ago in Innocents Abroad: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts alone. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Think about the cost of peace of mind. How much was that feeling worth on September 10^th, 2001, the day before 9/11? How much would you pay to get it back now? Translated into today’s terms, what was the value of an unsoiled coast before BP’s deepwater pipe began spewing thousands of barrels of poison into the Gulf?

More importantly, how much should they pay to fix the damage?

In today’s New York Times there’s a Shell ad titled “LET’S DELIVER ENERGY FOR A CHANGING WORLD. LET’S GO.”

I’m sorry, but is someone at Shell smoking crack? Here the whole world, or at least the whole Western Hemisphere, is fixated on BP’s tragic oil spill and Shell is getting jealous of all the attention their competition is getting?

In a post titled “Green Groups attack Shell’s national press ads” MarketingWeek quotes Greenpeace’s senior climate change advisor, Charlie Kronick: “At Shell’s AGM there were waves of satisfaction that they weren’t in BP’s position. BP is taking an almighty kicking, so this is an opportunity for [its rivals like Shell] to look good.”

An opportunity to look good? Is anyone at Shell watching the 24-hour beating BP is taking on CNN and MSNBC or are they too busy taking bong hits and high-fiving each other??!!

Look, I’ve got nothing against competitors taking advantage of someone else’s misfortune — plenty of great advertising campaigns have been built on that premise —  but why would Shell want to wade into BP’s oily waters and risk being painted with the same greasy brush? There is an old public relations adage that says all PR is good PR but I’d argue there are times when it’s better to lay low and wait. After all, BP’s doing a pretty good job of destroying their reputation all by themselves, Shell doesn’t need to help.

I just read an article that outlined Florida congressman Meek’s plan to raise marketing dollars to promote tourism to Florida in the wake of the tragic BP oil spill:

“U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a candidate in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, said $25 million set aside for advertising to lure tourists to Florida in the wake of the recent disastrous oil spill is not enough.”

“Meek told reporters Thursday that he sent a letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward, asking for $75 million more to address efforts to encourage tourism.”

Like politics, money is the lifeblood of marketing. Without the budget to get your message out to as many people as possible, even a cogent, compelling marketing strategy can fall flat. And so I applaud Representative Meek for raising as much money for our state’s tourism industry as possible.

But once we have the money, it’s important to remember that we still need to have something to say. Simply telling consumers that Florida’s beaches are oil free won’t work. First of all, thanks to the economy and the competition, consumers had to be convinced to visit BEFORE the oil spill. Second, few consumers are going to believe anything the government or Visitor Industry tells them about the condition of our waters. And third, thanks to an appalling lack of knowledge of geography, once it’s announced that oil has made landfall anywhere in Florida (most likely in the Panhandle) many consumers will assume our entire almost 1,200 miles of coastline is fouled.

Let’s hope that as much time, effort and passion is put into building a cohesive marketing and creative strategy as is invested in raising money. After all, as Sun-Tzu wrote in the time of Confucius: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

While BP continues its efforts to try to stop the catastrophic oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, promoting the Gulf beaches during the spill is a crisis on land for the Gulf Coast tourism industry. I recently spoke to National Public Radio (NPR) on how the Gulf region should market itself to prepare for the oil spill. The interview aired on Friday’s (May 14) edition of “All Things Considered.”

An additional insight I discussed with the reporter was the suggestion to look at the real consumer draws to the area. That is, why do consumers actually go to Mississippi’s Gulf Coast in the first place? Research shows that the number one attraction in the region is casino gambling and that a large majority of gamblers have no interest in visiting the beach at all.

Combine this with our first rule of Building Brand Value – All About Them – and it becomes clear that there are very compelling reasons for Biloxi’s audience to visit regardless of the beachfront situation. And because all eyes are on the region, now might be a particularly effective time to advertise as consumers are interested in knowing what’s happening in the area.

None of this should suggest that the oil spill will not affect Mississippi’s coast but that there are effective, productive and forward thinking things the region can do now to maintain and increase its business.