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McMinnville committee approves Design Sensory for branding and website overhaul
Summary
The Tourism and Marketing Board committee approved hiring Design Sensory to rebuild McMinnville's website, create branding and run digital marketing. The presenter said the package will cost $135,000, with a 30% down payment this fiscal year; ad spend of about $108,000 was proposed separately.
The McMinnville Tourism and Marketing Board committee approved a staff recommendation to hire Design Sensory to rebuild the city's tourism website, craft branding and handle digital marketing and ad campaigns.
Staff member, the presenter, described the website as eight years old and using plugins that no longer function together. “It is time to scrap it and start from scratch,” the presenter said. She told the committee that Design Sensory, which previously did the city’s branding in 2018, could provide branding, web hosting, SEO, photography and videography, ad creation, campaign deployment, and campaign monitoring. “They will provide every single 1 of those services. It'll be a hundred and $35,000,” the presenter said.
The presenter said Design Sensory would coordinate with the strategic-planning firm so stakeholder engagement could proceed in tandem. She said the city plans ad spending separate from the vendor fee: “Hoping to spend a hundred and $8,000 in actual advertising this year, so about $12,000 a month starting in, once the website is completed and the ad campaign is completed.” The presenter said roughly 30 percent of the Design Sensory fee would be a down payment in the current fiscal year and that milestone billing would follow contract deliverables.
Committee members asked about vendor experience, timetables and sample work. The presenter said Design Sensory had produced websites for other cities and had recently worked on Visit Knoxville and Visit Chattanooga, and that the company’s proposal included photography samples and an overall creative concept. The presenter emphasized wanting one vendor to handle the work end to end to reduce the department’s coordination burden.
A motion to approve the recommendation was made and seconded; the committee approved the recommendation by voice vote. The presenter said she would request a draft contract from the vendor for review before final execution.
Why it matters: The website, branding and ad campaigns are the public face of the city’s tourism efforts and are intended to improve online performance and more effectively target potential visitors. The presenter said the work is expected to improve the county’s digital competitiveness and support tourism-based economic goals.
Looking ahead: staff will obtain a contract draft and track deliverables and ad spending against milestones and the budget.
