MCALLEN, Texas - Entrepreneur Joaquin Spamer called on economic development corporations to coordinate their marketing efforts during a powerful presentation at a recent Hidalgo County Prosperity Task Force/Futuro RGV summit.
The summit, held at South Texas College’s Pecan Campus, was titled “CEOs Unite: Let’s Get Uncomfortable.” Spamer, president and founder of Commodities Integrated Logistics (CIL), may well have made some city leaders and EDCs uncomfortable with his remarks.
He said the resources of Valley should be pooled together to ensure the Rio Grande Valley gets a better bang for its marketing buck.
“We have a problem. A big problem. Nobody knows who we are,” Spamer said. “The only guys that know who we are the guys here and about a million people here in the Valley. No one else knows. Whatever they tell you, they don't know.”
By way of example, Spamer cited a visit he made to Memphis a few years back. He was trying to secure a contract with a “huge” US trading company called Donovans that did a lot of business in Mexico. After he had painstakingly made his pitch, the Donovan’s representative asked, where, exactly, is the Rio Grande Valley?
“On the way back I told my partner, there is no way we are going to sell our services if we do not sell the RGV first,” Spamer said. “There is no way we are going to get any development, prosperity, property reduction. There is no way we are going to accomplish any of these goals if we do not sell the RGV first.”
Economic development corporations should be pushing the RGV as a whole, not their particular city, Spamer suggested.
“I'm sorry. I'm going to say it (like it is). Nobody cares who you are. If you are from Alamo, they don't care. If you are from Brownsville, they don't care. We need to we need to push the RGV because then they're going to see that is a region but when they say Alamo they don't care. When they see it is Brownsville to Zapata, it makes sense.”
Spamer also questioned the money being spent on marketing the Valley. He said there is too much duplication of effort with no benefit from a multiplier effect.
“How is the money being spent because I have an issue with it,” Spamer said. “You have the McAllen Economic Development Corporation. You have the Port of Brownsville. You have COSTEP. You have the RGV Partnership. You have everyone spending money on economic development.”
Spamer said if all these monies were added together the total figure would be huge.
“Nobody is organized. That money is not being multiplied. There is no synergy between all of us.”
Spamer recommended a comprehensive marketing strategy that involves both the private and the public sector.
"We need to get everybody organized and we need to break it into pieces. What is happening is that you have an EDC that goes to Mexico City and they do a great presentation. Great. But then next week there is another EDC going to the same place. We're wasting our time.”
Spamer said the marketing efforts should be coordinated. If San Benito does not have a big budget to market the region, let their EDC work the Houston market, he suggested. “Go to all the manufacturing associations in Houston and talk about the Valley,” he said. If another EDC leader has strong connections in Vancouver, let he or she handle Vancouver.
“McAllen (EDC) has been doing a very good job in South Korea. Leave South Korea to McAllen,” Spamer said.
Under Spamer’s plan, “you (would) have all these different organizations taking care of different areas of the world.” And, he said, “we should all be selling the same concept, the RGV.”
Spamer then said he was going to say something that might sound bad.
“We are not going to accomplish nothing, anything, if we keep gathering together, talking to each other, coming out very nicely in all the pictures in the Rio Grande Guardian and other different media here. It does not work. We are just talking to each other. We are preaching to the choir.”
Editor's Note: Here is a video recording of Joaquin Spamer answering the first of two questions posed at the "CEOs Unite: Let's Get Uncomfortable" summit. The moderator is Hidalgo County Prosperity Task Force coordinator Mario Reyna.
https://youtu.be/pdVh_jr8UE4
