City events unite communities, bring tourism

Many organizations are involved with the development and execution of the various events and festivals in Tomball and Magnolia over the course of the year. However, two people in particular have done more to create and promote events in each city in the past year than anyone else.

After identifying the need for someone to step up Tomball's tourism efforts, the city created a marketing director position and hired Mike Baxter to fill it.

"The responsibilities that this job has taken on have grown beyond what was in the original job description," Baxter said. "It's really about raising awareness of Tomball in general."

Deborah Rose Miller wears many hats in Magnolia, but the common denominator in all of her positions involves connecting people, businesses and community organizations through events and gatherings.

"That is what I love to do," she said. "My participation on the school board, with the Magnolia Rotary Club, with the city and as president of the Magnolia Community Foundation are all tied to my passion for bringing the community together."

As Baxter and Miller prepare for the next season of events to hit their cities, several new enterprises are on the horizon. Baxter said he wants to recreate the 1950s drive-in movie environment with a Friday Night Creature Feature at the Historic Tomball Depot Plaza this summer. Meanwhile, Miller said the Miss Magnolia Pageant will be making a comeback in December in conjunction with the Magnolia Hometown Christmas.

Mike Baxter, Marketing Director, City of Tomball

What does your position with the city entail?

The primary responsibility is to generate tourism visits that will put folks into hotels, which also has a trickle-down effect benefiting businesses. I take care of advertising and publicity for the city as it's related to tourism for people out of market and in market. I do photography and press releases while growing the city's online presence through social media as well.

What marketing strategies have been successful?

At this point there really hasn't been anything that hasn't worked well. Social media pages have just gone nuts. We went over 2,300 likes on Facebook. The Youtube page, which didn't exist 18 months ago, has 36 videos with over 5,000 views. We launched a new website with a new festival and events section and a photo gallery synced to our Flickr page. We are now on a website called www.tourtexas.com that lists descriptions of our festivals and events. We had 45 people requesting more information on Tomball after the first day and received more than 100 inquiries since we started.

What new things are you planning for Tomball's upcoming event season?

This summer, on the a First Friday of June, July and August, we want to host Friday Night Creature Features at the Depot. We're going to use the big projector screen to create the old-fashioned '50s drive-in situation. You bring your lawn chair or blanket and we'll show movies like "Creature from the Black Lagoon," and "Them." The restaurants will all be open at the Depot barns. People could even sit back on the patio of the wine bar and watch the movie from across the street with a glass of wine.

The art festival we're planning for the Depot is new. It's called Diesels and Easels. After a year of the Artwalks we thought to try to bring all of that to one central location and just have a big art festival to see how they compare. Da Vinci Artists Gallery will be searching for really good artists who want to participate. We're working with the schools to see what kind of student artist participation we can get.

What improvements are in store for existing events?

Attendance more than doubled for the Honky Tonk Music Festival with around 3,600 people turning out at this year's event. If we can double our attendance on all of our events, that would be awesome. You don't want to leave anything the way it was last year. You always want to bump it up a little more, add a new element and get rid of what didn't work. Not a single day goes by without someone contacting us saying how much they appreciate what we're doing to bring the fun stuff to town. They're saying that they've seen a difference in the community in the excitement.

Deborah Rose Miller, President, Magnolia Community Foundation

How did the Magnolia Community Foundation get started and what was your role?

The Magnolia Community Foundation was put in place as a catalyst for the Magnolia Music Festival. I was there from the start, but just on the side at first. Jimmy Thornton, who was mayor at the time, was the original catalyst. Because of what I was doing with the community working with him on an informal capacity, I ended up on the first formal board.

By the second music festival, we knew we wanted to be more than a catalyst, and we wanted the music festival to be something bigger. That's when we took a year off, regrouped and looked into branding something a little more whimsical, which turned into the Magnolia Love Bug Fest.

The uniqueness of Magnolia is that all of our community events are done by volunteers. None of them are really spear-headed by the city. We couldn't do it without the city, but they're not the driver. For our big community events, we have a few major groups: both chambers of commerce, the Magnolia Historical Society and the Magnolia Community Foundation.

How have tourism efforts been going over the past year?

The Mardi Gras Parade was a huge success and probably got more buzz than any single event we've done. I think we're reaching out and being able to get a bigger percentage of Magnolia, as well as more people from outside of the community. We started advertising in the Texas Highway Event magazine. We picked up two vendors who drove five hours just to work the Mardi Gras event and they were thrilled. They're coming back for the Love Bug Fest.

MCF just hired a professional marketing promotions company—IH Events—to assist us with the Love Bug Fest. They're taking this to a level we aren't able to on our own. This same company has worked with Katy Festival and other big festivals. They're going to help us stage it, book the entertainment and get a carnival set up.

What are you working on now?

Another thing MCF does is promote other events in the city. We make sure we don't conflict with already scheduled dates and see if we can group things together that will create better synergism.

MCF wants to bring back the Miss Magnolia pageant this year. It was a chamber event that was discontinued about three years ago. We want to bring it back as a part of Old Town Christmas with girls participating in the parade, so it will be helping the chamber. I get calls constantly about why we don't have one. It's a void for our students. It's a chance for them to improve public speaking skills and confidence and engage with the community.

For two years we did a tailgate party on The Stroll. The community loves it, but it doesn't really work for a linear park and it hit at a rough time for principals and coaches. We're working on combining the event with the Rotary's Magnolia Bowl, when the two high school teams play. We want it to be a huge community event.