Cow town, heal thyself.
Here we sit, Denver, lamenting that people from the big, bad, hip cities on the coasts see us as one stoplight away from being a cattle trail.
Yet ask tourism experts and image researchers from around the nation what exactly they think of us, and “cow town” is not in their vocabulary.
“That’s not a term I would use, and I was just there last week,” said Wayne Hunt of the Pasadena, Calif.-based image and branding company Hunt Design.
“Denver to us has the image of a fairly modern Western city,” said Mark Bonn, a tourism researcher at Florida State University.
“That never came up in any discussion,” said Marc Scorca, chairman of Opera America, who helped steer the 2008 National Performing Arts Convention to Denver. “You may be surprised to realize there are very few cities that have active arts organizations in all the major disciplines, fewer than two dozen cities, and Denver is one of them.”
There are even fewer cities with teams in every major sport, and Denver ranks among that elite. And no, pro rodeo doesn’t count.
So why do we keep doing this to ourselves? Show pictures only of legislators who wear cowboy hats? Tell the visiting in-laws they won’t want to stay long, since we’re just a big feedlot? Thrust a microphone in former NBA great Magic Johnson’s face and ask him why he bothers visiting this … cow town? Turn the ultimate annual urban celebration – the NBA All-Star Game – into a country hoedown with a honky-tonk halftime show?
Because we don’t know yet what else we are, according to the image-makers. Stroll through Denver’s souvenir shops, and what icons do we promote to the world? No cows in sight – but a hopeless mishmash of mountains, noble horses, gold pans or unrecognizable downtown buildings. We have no Golden Gate Bridge, no Sears Tower, no Mount Rainier to shout, “This is Denver, leave me never!”
And until we figure out what we’re about, words like “cow town” will be thoughtlessly dredged up, driving local tourism officials stark, raving mad.
“It does keep coming up in conversations here,” said Dan McGill, vice president of the Denver Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau. “What they mean by that, I guess, is that we’re Western, unsophisticated, no great restaurants. That’s the difficult part, getting the city aligned” on a message, not sounding convinced it can be done.
McGill said he and other tourism officials are in the middle of studies and planning sessions that will look for specific Denver “brands” to sell to the nation.
So let’s go to a prime detractor, and ask him why he won’t shut up about this “cow-town” thing. Jason Stoval, who promotes events and goes on critical rants using the pseudonym Sid Pink, admits he feels kind of bad – almost – for being so hard on his hometown.
But here are the things that drive Sid Pink nuts:
No band has broken big nationally from Denver “since Foghat.”
The Denver Center for the Performing Arts aggregates more cultural visitors than far larger urban areas, yet “we’re thought of as a gateway to skiing or, if not that, a sports town.”
For two years, Colorado was one of the few states without a film commission – “flabbergasting,” Pink laments. (A new film commissioner started work in June; previously, the commission was folded into the larger state tourism office.)
Changing people’s thought balloons is extremely difficult, respond the people who get paid to do it.
“Once an area has an image, and especially if that image is based on reality” – i.e., Denver really is next to mountains – “it’s really hard to change that,” said Carl Winston, director of the Hospitality and Tourism Management school at San Diego State University.
“The perception of Denver is that it’s a great gateway,” Winston said. “Denver might be a pretty girl, but there’s an absolutely gorgeous woman up in those mountains.”
Besides, Denver could break a leg running away from an image firmly based in reality, said local historian Tom Noel, whose book “Riding High: Colorado Ranchers and 100 Years of the National Western Stock Show” will be published in November.
“Our football team is called the Broncos, not the Opera-goers,” Noel said. After the initial gold rush of the late 1800s, livestock was far more important to Denver’s growth than other industries, Noel argues. What is now Interstate 25 was a cattle trail. Most of the city is built on former ranch land.
“It makes Denver distinctive. To try to compete with New York as an intelligentsia center, we’ll just never catch up,” he said.
Shrug off slogans like “cow town” and move on, urges Betty Parker, a professor of marketing at Western Michigan University. “Anything west of the Mississippi is sometimes seen as a cow town,” she said.
“You’re part of the West. And you’re not part of California. So you’re a cow town. It’s not really an insult. Now, San Antonio, talk about a cow town …”
Meaning, Parker said, that San Antonio truly was a dusty cattle spot that has since rehabbed its image to become a “riverwalk” and entertainment center.
Miami, she added, was “death’s waiting room for seniors,” dirty and tacky and simply old. Since the city embraced South Beach and its art deco highlights, it has become one of the hottest cities for young people.
“They rebranded themselves, through a combination of intent, a strong economy, natural beauty. I can think of a lot harder places to promote than Denver.”
What Denver needs to do, many of the observers said, is stop wringing its hands over phrases and perceptions and get into the national market with its existing strengths. Burgeoning arts facilities. Some of the best sports venues and teams in the country. A widely admired airport. Endless adventures less than an hour away.
Recognize that every city looks in the mirror and finds something missing, said San Diego State’s Winston. Las Vegas desperately wanted to become a family destination and spent a few years promoting that, he noted. When it didn’t really work, it went back to its bad old self with the brilliant slogan, “What happens here, stays here.”
San Diego, Winston said, already has the iconic draw of “that sailboat city,” with perfect weather, family attractions and California cool. “Yet San Diego wants to be a fine dining mecca, and it drives people here nuts that we’re not seen that way,” he said, laughing.
For his part, McGill wants to work on the souvenir sticker, the visceral summation of what Denver has to offer. He psyches himself up with a favorite polling statistic: Among meeting planners, Denver ranked 23rd among the planners who hadn’t recently visited. Those who had visited boosted the city to sixth or seventh.
San Diego’s sailboats explain it all. The symbol is an “aspiration and a draw” for everyone who goes there, but only 3 percent of visitors ever make it on to a boat, McGill said.
“So what’s the 30-second elevator pitch for Denver?” he asked.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
