Before calculating whether Arkansas gardening and lifestyle celebrity P. Allen Smith is worth $845,000 a year to the state for promotion, consider this: State tourism and marketing officials say they have better ways to spend the $200,000 a year Smith has been getting.
Tourism’s longtime ad agency, CJRW of Little Rock, says that based on analytical data and metrics, a quadrupled state paycheck for the TV host, author and online influencer “would not sufficiently benefit tourism in Arkansas.”
Stacy Hurst, the state’s new secretary of the Department of Parks, Heritage & Tourism, would like to keep some deal with Smith if it’s “reasonably priced and measurable. But Smith, who has a substantial social media following (350,000 Facebook followers and 75,000 YouTube subscribers, for example), told state lawmakers he’s not interested in keeping his state duties at the $200,000 rate.
There’s no doubt Smith is a good ambassador, spreading awareness about dozens of Arkansas towns and hundreds of events, not to mention promoting his own Moss Mountain Farm in Roland.
But the bid to goose his state pay took many Arkansans aback, including Gov. Asa Hutchinson, the target of one of Smith’s appeals. Hutchinson is supporting Hurst and the ad agency, which CJRW CEO Darin Gray said Smith bypassed in his pay gambit, even though P. Allen Smith Garden Home is a media vendor parter with CJRW under the state’s $15 million-a-year ad contract.
Smith told Arkansas Business he wasn’t angling for a raise, but essentially seeking a promotion to a job serving several state organizations. A chart provided to lawmakers listed possible contributions from various agencies: $300,000 from Parks & Tourism, $260,000 from the Department of Education, $100,000 from the Arkansas Economic Development Commission and so on. His goal is not just to attract tourists, but also to recruit businesses and lure new residents.
“We submitted a new and extensive proposal that would expand the relationship with the state,” Smith said in an email. His team analyzed all social media posts through Social Bluebook, a tool that assigns value to messages based on audience and engagement.
The conclusion? Smith “delivered $1.3 million in marketing value to Arkansas Parks & Tourism” between April 2018 and April 2019. “We did this because I believe in my state and want to help build awareness for what a wonderful place it is to live and visit.”
The pay dispute drew headlines in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Arkansas Times’ Arkansas Blog after Hurst was grilled at a legislative hearing by Smith’s admirers, who fear he’ll leave Arkansas.
Did Hurst feel pilloried for taking care with taxpayer money? “No,” she replied. “I appreciate the opportunity to talk about tourism, answer questions and get feedback regarding our approach.” However, she said, “We are committed to using our taxpayer resources wisely, and I can say with confidence that we follow a sophisticated, data-driven approach.”
She praised Smith and called him an asset for Arkansas. However, “our analysis does not indicate an $800,000 vendor agreement” with him would pay off for the state, Hurst said.
Gray said the proof of the state’s tourism marketing can be seen in nine straight years of growth in receipts from the state’s 2% tourism tax, which hit a record $16.9 million in fiscal year 2019.
Smith counts total TV households in a market in his data, Gray said, rather than the number of homes actually watching his “Garden Style” show. Nielsen ratings show far tinier viewerships — 7,572 households out of more than 522,000 homes in the Little Rock market, for example, according to CJRW analysis.
The $200,000 Smith reaped last year represented 2.9% of the state’s total $16.9 million tourism marketing spend, Gray said. The $800,000 request would be nearly 12% of the spend. “That’s a high-cost, low return approach … you’d have to slash just about every other category, from TV to radio to digital to newspapers.”
CJRW compared Smith’s $400,000 over the past two years to a $372,000 two-year ad spend with AARP.com. The state’s tourism site reaped 56,000 visitors from AARP.com, compared with 1,400 visitors coming from pallensmith.com, Gray said.
Smith is disappointed that CJRW failed to appreciate “the extraordinary content that my team produces and the total value that I bring … Over the years, I have continued to build and increase the number of people hearing and seeing my message, but the contract hasn’t kept pace with that exponential growth.”
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