Sun Valley the Micromarket

As some pointed out on my Dynamite article, it was time to take a vacation. Me and Buckhead Betty with the fab 3 ran the liquid free gauntlet at the airport and headed out to see my sister in Sun Valley. By they way, liquid free means no Benadryl for those sitting near the one year old. After 4 hours of testing her lungs we were free to take a puddle jumper into Sun Valley. For those of you who have never been to Sun Valley it is one of the best summer places in the United States. Blue sky days at 85 with cool nights in the mid 40's. A totally active environment. Biking, hiking, fishing, kyaking, whitewater rafting, you name it. Put it on your list.

For some reason we have a lot of connection to the valley. My grandmother's uncle left the stage on Broadway to become Sheriff in the 1920's. My wife, the beautiful Buckhead Betty, lived there in the 80's. One of my good friends moved out in the 90's. And my sister married the owner of the one great dive bar in Sun Valley, Lefty's, and now she lives there with my children's favorite uncle.

Knowing business people in a town that size lets you in on some of the secrets. I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of blue hairs in the crowd. They said this is a conscious effort by the Sun Valley marketing arm. These are the only people who can afford the million dollar plus real estate the town has to offer. Also, every summer used to be packed with college students washing dishes digging ditches and whatever it took for their beer money to keep flowing. Not anymore. You won't hear it from your Nielsen rep but all the low paying jobs have been taken over by a growing Hispanic population. The locals said each week they publish the birth's in the local paper. It is usually 50% latino.

This just further's my belief that you gotta see it to believe it. Too much we rely on the numbers given to us by a massaged consensus reading. We like to go out in the markets and see what you can find before we spend our client's dollars. Ketchum would be considered a mildly successful all 95% white town in Idaho by a research bureau, but as we saw last week, things are changing and it's important for marketers to keep up.