Creative Director Prentice Howe Participates in CNN's Small Business Makeover

Excerpt:

Fortune Small Business recently lassoed three experts to help the Fosters map out a slump-survival strategy. For marketing advice we turned to Prentice Howe, 34, creative director of Door Number 3, a marketing and advertising agency in Austin. Experienced in online marketing, Howe scored a coup with a much-praised Website redesign for the Dallas/Fort Worth Area Tourism Council.

After a rambling tour of weathered barns and rustic pavilions along the ranch’s rutted dirt roads, Howe sits down with the Fosters in their knotty pine-paneled conference room and promptly offers a blunt assessment of their Website. Designed in 2001, it features fuzzy, outdated photos of business folk looking awkward in cowboy duds, sort of like The Office meets Gunsmoke. The only video on the site offers a panoramic view of an empty campfire pit surrounded by picnic tables and hay bales, with the camera spinning around the scene fast enough to induce vertigo.

“Your Website is a well-worn boot,” Howe says. “You can do a spit shine or buy a new boot. I vote for the new boot.”

Steven looks chagrined. “I know we’re behind the curve on technology, but it is a tough time to invest in the site,” he says. “And we’ve always scored big with meeting planners when we give them personal tours of the ranch.”

Howe stands his ground. A new Website would likely cost Circle R about $20,000, but it’s a vital business investment. Most corporate meeting planners are in their twenties or thirties and have embraced technology with a vengeance, he says. They go online to evaluate potential event venues, especially now that corporate travel budgets have been trimmed. Few planners have the time or the money for such excursions. That’s why it’s crucial for the site to capture all of Circle R’s sights and sounds.

His prescription: crisper, more contemporary photography; an online tour; and short videos that highlight festivities such as rodeos and campfire sing-alongs. Banish the site’s kitschy photos of cowboys with guns on their hips and saloon girls in rip-‘em-off red bustiers. Instead, feature photos of the ranch’s grizzled cook, Buck Cave, at the barbecue pit.

“I’d like to see photos so good that I can almost smell the steaks sizzling on the grill,” Howe says. “You’re not selling meeting space; you’re selling an experience.”

Full story on CNN/Money