Cape Council approves BOLD Marketing agreement for Convention and Visitors Bureau

Cape Girardeau City Council members Monday, Sept. 16, approved entering into an agreement with BOLD Marketing to provide services to the Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB).

BOLD had the lowest bid of the two responses for services for $73,200. The agreement is to promote Cape Girardeau tourism, and the monthly retainer fee for the services amounts to $4,000.

The council passed the motion 5 to 0, with council members Nate Thomas and Tameka Randle absent.

Ward 4 Councilman David Cantrell said during the meeting that in their process for finding agencies to market Cape Girardeau tourism through the CVB, the city reached out to multiple local agencies.

"Several (proposals) went out to local, community marketing agencies. Of those several, only two came back. One was outside of the budget ... and the other one was BOLD Marketing," Cantrell said.

He said while Dana Thomas, who owns BOLD Marketing, is Nate Thomas' wife, other companies did have the opportunity to bid on the proposal. Mayor Stacy Kinder said that while the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce was in control of the CVB, it also worked with BOLD Marketing.

Parks and Recreation director Doug Gannon said the Chamber had worked with them since Fiscal Year 2019. He also said there hadn't been many changes to the contract since they worked with the chamber.

"If anything, we've defined it better, because we, as you all know, we've assembled a very engaged, interactive board, so I really feel like we will have an opportunity to define this relationship more as we move forward. And they basically gave us a proposal for the same amount that they've paid last year," Gannon said.

Gannon also added on what the company's fees would look like beyond the $4,000 retainer. He said there would "basically" be $1,500 a month for campaign development, placement, monitoring optimization and analysis of Google paid ads as well as "on average" $600 a month for targeted ad placements including social media.

Kinder also asked Gannon whether the payment of the contract would be the same as the funding of the CVB through hotel and motel tax receipts.

"That's a dedicated funding source for the CVB. So, this expenditure is utilizing those hotel dollars to effectively market Cape Girardeau, which is exactly what that funding source was intended to be. So really, it has to be dedicated to that," Gannon said.

The agreement is set to start this month and run through June 2026, with the option to extend the contract.