What’s Carbon County’s ‘brand?’ Umm, good question

By Richard Shaw

Emery County has decided that it’s uniqueness falls in the realm of bike trails. Daggett County says that top notch fishing is their spot.
So what does Carbon County have that can be used to attract tourists to the area?
That was one of the questions that arose during the Business Conference held the end of last week on the USU Eastern campus.
The impetus for this and other considerations came from Roger Brooks, the breakfast keynote speaker and a community branding expert.
Brooks, who has worked with a number of counties in Utah to help them find their claim to fame also pointed out that drawing tourism to an area, one of the biggest industries in Utah, isn’t what it used to be. The world has changed and the internet and social media have made it so an area can be open to the world, but it has to be done in the right way.
One of the most important things he presented was the idea that there should be a no holds barred approach to using private business to forward an area’s goals.
“If there is anything I can tell you it is to not let local politics kill your marketing efforts,” he said. “You need to promote your anchor tenants. Promoting private business is the number one benefit of tourism”
He went on to show how marketing can work for an area when it is done properly through a combination of internet contacts, public relations, print materials and peer reviews.
That presentation began a day of new ideas for many of the 150 attendees at the conference. The main hall in the Jennifer Leavitt Student Center was lined with booths from businesses and entities that help businesses to succeed. After Brooks’ presentation, breakout sessions were held across campus. Those included creating a positive customer service culture, crowd funding strategies, branding platforms, finding if a business startup is in a persons future and managing growth in a business.
Presenters came from around the country with Brian Meece of RocketHub traveling from New York City and Brooks, who came from Seattle, Wash. rounding out the group.
The lunch keynote speaker was Derek Miller, the CEO of World Trade Center Utah. The operation is one of many across the country that works to help American businesses obtain contacts around the world.
“The barriers to do business around the world are coming down,” he told the audience. “Ten years ago internet use around the world was confined to about 200 million people. Now it is being used by over four billion people.”
He said the changes in communication and ability to market across international boundaries has changed the game of exporting. And he said Utah was in a unique position to capitalize on all that is happening.
“Utah is doing very well economically,” he said. “We are ranked ninth in the country in exports. One third of of those exports come from primary metals. Two thirds is from value added products (things made or created in the state) such as chemicals, software and food/agricultural products.”
He said the largest export markets for the state are Hong Kong, Canada, the United Kingdom, China and Mexico.
“In the United States only about one percent of the companies that can export do,” he explained. “In Utah it is about five percent.”
But he also said that the rural areas of the state are well below what they could be. “We want to help companies in the rural areas to think and act globally,” he said.
He said that the World Trade Center Utah offers training and seminars for businesses to learn about international business and how to do it. He also pointed out that the organization also has trade missions that people can be a part of and that the organization often host diplomats from various countries in their Salt Lake location where local businesses can come and discuss what they can do and how their products can fit in with other countries’ markets.
“In the last couple of weeks we have had officials from China, Columbia and India here,” he said. “And today (Friday) a representative from Vietnam is here. Next week we will be hosting diplomatic missions from Thailand and France.”
The day ended with a business and technology competition by college students who made presentations to a panel of judges as they vied for scholarship money and cash.