This morning marked the third time that I was invited to attend entrepreneurial presentations delivered by Entrepreneurial Studies students at Nichols School. Each time the objective changed – from figuring out an ideal fit for a vacant Buffalo building, to conceptually launching their own businesses, no holds barred.
Today’s presentations dealt with the dilemma revolving around how to draw millennials from Canada, to stay the weekend in Buffalo. I thought that this was an àpropos assignment considering that this city is finally gearing up to deliver well-rounded memorable experiences for young people, especially with the arrival of ridesharing (coming soon).
Why Canadian millennials should be a target customer/market for our regional tourism efforts.
Overall, the students did a great job, as they analyzed the issues and came up with real world solutions. To add to the challenge, the Entrepreneurial Students were joined by Nichols School French V students, which meant that part of each of the five short pitch presentations was to be delivered in French. Yikes… tough, but very practical and clever considering that the goal was to attract Canadians. It helped that the students had taken a trip to Montreal in order to delve directly into the project.
The combined language/business teams were tasked with the following challenges to build upon:
- Cultural investigations/awareness of Canadians millennials (in the broader context of all Canadians and of all millennials and of all tourists to Buffalo)
- In depth interviews (conducted primarily in French) on the streets of Montreal
- 3rd party research (media/tourism/demographical…)
- Rapid prototyping (design and tech based)
The bi-lingual marketing assignments were overseen by Sarah Jensen (Teacher, Nichols School – Entrepreneurial Studies Elective). I’m a big fan of what she is teaching and preaching at Nichols, because these students are all learning to be successful entrepreneurs, by using Buffalo as the subject matter for their difficult tasks. When I was in high school, no one ever used my city as a tool to learn. Not only are these students learning all about ins and outs of Buffalo, they are being charged to come up with ways to improve upon the renaissance that is currently underway. I am of the belief that every local high school students should be taught about his or her home city. It’s the best way to take away real, tangible life lessons. Once a student understands how to master his or her own environment, they can apply the practical lessons to so many other studies and tasks.
I found it interesting (and predictable) that one of the teams that surveyed millennial Montréalités came away with one descriptor of their impressions of Buffalo – “tundra”. Another group found that the millennials were already visiting the US, but were bypassing Buffalo to head to warmer climates.
During the course of the presentations, some of the ideas that were bandied about included:
Utilizing social media (mainly Instagram) to infiltrate highly pedestrian trafficked routes. To create visually engaging Buffalo-related materials that would trigger passersby to search for more information online. This would help to dispel the ‘tundra’ image, while enticing people to take a six hour road trip to a city that is visually appealing. Also, we must not forget that Toronto is just over an hour away. The idea of video was also broached, working with Canadian visitors’ organizations to push, using funds from Buffalo’s bed tax. Apparently, millennials check their phones an average of 110 times a day, so a video element could work well with smart phone technology.
The crux of the concepts revolved around social media and visual engagement. Canada should be considered low hanging fruit when attempting to attract a new segment of visitors to Buffalo. The students felt that if they could somehow portray Buffalo in a way that is visually appealing, they could get millennial Canadians to tune in. After all, “Beauty is in the eye of the Buffalo.” The marketing initiatives should also be presented in bi-lingual formats.
Finally, I like the idea that Buffalo businesses (both big and small) step up to help market the city. Can you imagine what we could get done if we got professionals from Fisher-Price, Labatt, and Rich Products together in one room, to work towards bringing these students’ ideas to fruition?
More than anything else, I love hearing about all of the great ideas that these students have come up with throughout the trio of presentations. Hopefully Buffalo retains these smart go-getters who have cultivated an entrepreneurial understanding of Buffalo that they will take with them wherever they go.