Qualifications, Experience And References

The Team

Richard Stenger has worked to promote West Coast destinations for more than a decade, primarily through media communications. In respect to travel publicity, highlights include a successful campaign to name a client Lonely Planet’s top US place to visit; landing a small mountain town on the cover of Westways, the nation’s largest auto club magazine; numerous feature stories in Sunset Magazine; and placing the world’s tallest tree in the first San Francisco Chronicle front-page story to run from top to bottom in 90 years.

As a member of the Society of American Travel Writers and PR representative with Brand USA, he is familiar with many key members of the state’s travel media. In his PR and journalism career, he’s placed content with the New Yorker, Washington Post, Condé Nast, National Geographic Traveler, National Geographic Adventure, Parents Magazine, USA Today, among others. In 2020, Richard Stenger won a Visit California Poppy Award for best public relations campaign for a destination.

As a reporter, editor and freelancer, Richard has worked for CNN, New York Times Digital and the San Francisco Chronicle, and more news outlets. He’s appeared on numerous television networks including CNN and the Travel Channel. He’s won or co-won awards from the George Polk Foundation, Georgia Press Association and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for journalism excellence.

Among other pursuits, Richard has written several travel books, worked as a national park ranger and forest service researcher, and driven a Zamboni. He lives with his wife, Gretha, and four children on the northern California coast, along with nine chickens, two rabbits and one duck, Jemima.

Stenger Media, which launched in 2019 after years of in-house and contract work in the field, brings together a virtual agency of experienced marketing, creative and web experts from across the country, including the following team member for this proposed plan, with whom Richard has worked for more than decade on travel media campaigns. John Poimiroo, the former California state tourism director, has specialized in travel marketing communications for more than 30 years. He’s directed marketing communications and PR at two mountain resorts, a theme park, hotel and resort companies and major public relations agencies.

He also was the founding President and CEO of the National Parks Promotion Council and was elected by the US Travel Association as America’s best State Tourism Director.

During his career, John has received numerous honors in marketing communications, public relations, journalism and photography. The Society of American Travel Writers awarded him the Bronze Award in its prestigious Bill Muster Photo Competition. He has twice won the Frank Riley Award for travel writing by SATW’s Western Chapter.

John is editor and publisher of CaliforniaFallColor.com (judged California’s Best Outdoor Medium and Best Internet Site); writes a travel and outdoors column for the oldest daily newspaper in California, the Mountain Democrat; and is executive producer and correspondent for On Travel, which provides radio features to the American Forces Network (one million listeners). John races sailboats and is a member of Northern California Sheltie Rescue. He and his wife, Joan, live in El Dorado Hills in the Sierra foothills. They have three married children and four grandchildren.

Stenger Media’s two main focuses are public relations and rural destinations. One reason for its success is Richard and John, as working travel reporters, know the psychology of the travel media, business and technology trends in the industry, and maintain strong working relationships with the West Coast travel media.

QUALIFICATIONS, EXPERIENCE AND REFERENCES

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The Record

Stenger Media has many years of experience in promoting Humboldt County as a tourism destination. In particular, Richard has successfully promoted the county as a whole, leveraged the assets of its regions and communities to gain media attention for them individually, and managed media campaigns for numerous events.

In general, SM’s focus has been on rural destinations which, due to limited resources, lean more on PR than marketing to compete with better financed rivals in the big cities. Having extensively researched West Coast demographics and technology and economic trends as they relate to tourism, SM can help Humboldt differentiate itself from competitors like Mendocino, Shasta, Yosemite and others as they vie for California travelers, as well as extend publicity outreach to other Western states, the rest of the nation and world.

Measuring and Reporting

Monitoring, monetizing and otherwise measuring the impacts of public relations campaigns includes various tools and forms of analysis. First, number of placements is tallied. Second, estimated or actual audiences, readerships and impressions are counted. Third, the earned media value is calculated, based on comparable print space or broadcast time should advertising have been purchased. For online and social media, benchmarks can be somewhat more elusive. Often audience reach is not directly obtainable due to technical or privacy constraints of the publishers. However, indirect measurements are sometimes available, such as the general reach of a particular site or social media, social media monitoring services such as Hootsuite, measuring landing page referrals in Google Analytics on a DMO site, or firsthand anecdotal reports of success from destination businesses.

SM, being proficient in old and new media, is well positioned to help the Humboldt Lodging Alliance reach the different demographics necessary for its tourism economy to survive, the growing number of Millennials, who do not have a tradition of family vacations; and the still significant Boomers, who tend to have more leisure time and resources to travel. In general, SM has relied on a mix of Google Reports, regular check-ins with reporters, and direct monitoring of targeted media to confirm media placements. Moreover, SM uses conventional media tools to determine media reach and earned media value, such as independently audited circulation and readership numbers and published advertising rates.

Various examples of previous reporting, which include quarterly and yearly formats, are included in the Appendix.