Our partner businesses that have joined us for our Meet Minneapolis Monthly Partner Webinar Series have been privy to the extensive sales, marketing and advocacy plans we have designed to restart our industry. Our ability to launch those plans hinged largely on 1) the completion of the trial and 2) the subsequent readiness of the traveling public to resume their consideration of Minneapolis as a leisure and meeting/event destination. Be sure to check out the next installment of our webinar series tomorrow (register here).

Based on our continuing community experience in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, there are many questions about how we tell our story. As the stewards of the brand, Meet Minneapolis must aggressively tell the world what distinguishes us from other destination options. We also need to tell a complete and authentic story. The world has had a front row seat to the events in Minneapolis through extensive media attention over the last year – and much of that attention has been unfavorable.

There is a delicate balance between honoring the memory of George Floyd and the movement his death inspired, and working assertively to restart our devasted hospitality and tourism industry.

Our team has begun to explore how the rich and intricate story of a community embarking upon a healing and introspection process can be told in the context of our overall marketing messaging. The creative direction we’ve conceived is a campaign around the Top 8 Reasons Why meeting planners and visitors should choose our city. According to Meet Minneapolis’ Senior Director of Marketing Jill Anderson, this is “the strongest and most flexible way to communicate a complex destination story.” And that complexity predates George Floyd’s death and the subsequent unrest and awakening.

The Top 8 Reasons Why campaign is a vehicle that allows us to succinctly tell our destination story. Our social justice core value of "A Community Leading the Path Forward” is the #1 reason, and it helps communicate the vital importance this has to our city's story and our commitment to working together with our community moving forward. To help us accurately and authentically frame this reason, we have begun to ask a very key foundational question:

• Meet Minneapolis is talking about the social justice advancements of our community under the category of “A Community Leading the Path Forward.” What are the programs, initiatives, policies, or community stories that help support that statement?

We are seeking responses to this question from our team members and stakeholders. We invite you to ponder it and let us know what you think. It is imperative that we hear from our various local audiences before we can genuinely tell our story to the world.

A Community Leading the Path Forward must be more than a short-term band-aid approach. This commitment to substantive change is a part of our DNA now, and we must authentically incorporate it in our messaging.