I was in a post-mortem for an annual festival yesterday.

One of my main jobs is promotion, of the soft kind: I formerly took rack brochures by hand to a variety of outlets that are expected to be (and are) sympathetic to the cause. This included, to make up examples for doing this for a rail preservation venue, the likes of places from state and local/regional tourism promotion visitor centers, other excursion lines and museums, local history museums, hobby shops, railroad and model RR clubs, and even the local restaurant in a former rail station. A certain amount of salesmanship is involved--if you were to just mail them, they may not get placed, but arrive in person, put a face to the group and mission, give a handshale and thank you (and buy lunch or whatnot), and you'll get results.

In comparing notes, we found that several of the formerly welcoming tourist promotion offices had been shuttered, due to either budgetary cutbacks and/or a paradigm shift in promotion. The tourist promotion office at the biggest, busiest Interstate rest stop in the region disappeared in the complete commercialized revamping of the place into even more of a "food court" than ever; we think they have a page on the center's wi-fi welcoming page as a "replacement." Hours had been severely truncated at another on the same highway,. with signs posted to the tourist promiotion website for after-hours access via the site's wi-fi. A regional office no longer had an office or center, so to speak. The festival no longer does the standard tri-fold brochure which lasted them for years; they now do a full-color oversized postcard which doubles as both a mailing and a flyer. It appears that, increasingly, a brochure is passé, lost in favor of a website accessed by a mobile through one of those QR codes (which, yes, we had on the postcard). And I was asked to supply photos for the society's website (and I'm gracious that way).

How have you changed your promotion? Or have you not?