Elephants, kittens and taxes, oh my!

By Ben Hillyer (Contact) | The Natchez Democrat

Published Friday, February 15, 2008

The strangest thoughts come to mind sometimes.

Working at a repetitive task earlier this week, my thoughts flashed to a physics lesson, elephants, kittens and taxes.

Let me connect the dots.

I frequently find myself applying concepts from my college physics class to human behavior.

Take the concept of inertia, for example.

A quick glance in a college textbook defines inertia as the property of matter by which that matter retains its state of rest or its velocity along a straight line so long as it is not acted upon by an external force.

Sounds like a lot to wrap your brain around, but it’s not, really.

Think of it this way. If you had a large elephant sitting in the middle of the room that refused to move, it would take a lot of people to force that elephant to move.

Yet, if you saw a kitten sitting in the same room, it would take little force to scoop it up and move it.

That elephant has a large moment of inertia, the kitten very little.

So there you have it — physics, elephants and kittens. It sounds logical when you think about it.

So where did taxes come from?

For the past week I have been thinking about the current proposal to raise taxes on hotels and restaurants in the Natchez.

My thoughts haven’t been so much about whether such a tax should be approved, but about how bad a job the tax proponents are doing to state their case.

And that is where the elephants come in.

It seems to me that marketing and advertising is about moving elephants, not kittens.

Most people are like elephants when it comes to their money — they possess huge amounts of inertia. Unless they can be convinced otherwise, most consumers do not like to give their cash freely. I certainly don’t.

It is the job of the advertiser and marketer to persuade people to buy a product they do not necessarily need or want.

They choose their words carefully, develop a simple persuasive message and consistently communicate that message in a creative and attention-getting fashion.

Such a job should be a breeze for those who market and advertise everything Natchez has to the rest of the world.

Yet, the very same people we trust to sell Natchez, have done a bad job selling this proposal.

Convincing taxpayers they need to give more of their money to government is no easy task.

Yet the people promoting this tax must think they are scooping up tiny kittens, not moving elephants.

Other than a few meetings in front of a couple of civic groups and the board of alderman, much of the general public has heard little more than the fact that their taxes may be raised.

No large group of restaurant owners or hoteliers have come forward to say how extra marketing dollars will help them and in turn help Natchez.

What will this additional funding buy us? Will it get us a full-page ad in Southern Living every month or a few more small ads buried in the middle of the magazine? Will it buy us big splashy billboards along I-55 between Jackson and New Orleans?

Will it enable us to do more creative marketing like maybe sponsor a Natchez balloon to fly in races across the country?

The problem with the current proposal is that no one has come forward to say how new funding will appreciably change how we market Natchez.

What group will we target with the new tax money that we are not targeting now?

In short, no clear, concise, consistent or creative message has been communicated to the public.

Maybe that is why the elephants are still in the room.

Ben Hillyer is the web editor for The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3540 or by e-mail at ben.hillyer@natchezdemocrat.com.