Myrtle Beach a Destination Disaster

It would be a gross understatement to say that “Mr. Myrtle Beach,” deceased and sorely missed Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce leader Ashby Ward, would be “spinning in his grave” if he knew how his incompetent, and ethically devoid successor, St. Bradley Dean, with a handful of morally bankrupt good old boy assassins, in only four short years, has turned his beloved Chamber into a despicable Chamber of Corruption and Chaos.

Under Mr. Ward’s sure-handed guidance the Chamber, it’s members and the entire Myrtle Beach area flourished, basking in neighborly e’sprit de corps and double-digit tourism increases in virtually every one of his 29-years at the Chamber’s helm.

Sadly for the Myrtle Beach area, on Dean’s watch that was then and this is now, and NOW REALLY SUCKS!

Dean, with what he calls his “Kitchen Cabinet,” comprised of the usual rocket scientists the likes of Frans Mustart, Woody Crosby, Shep Guyton, Tom Herron, Leigh Meese, Wayne Gray and “Dirty” Dorothy Anderson, have in only a scant 4-years destroyed virtually everything positive that Mr. Ward worked so diligently and honorably for 29-years to build.

While other destinations continue to progress, Myrtle Beach, with Dean and his cronies bungling the marketing and screwing the members, has languished with hotel occupancy declining or, at best remaining flat, and the average daily rate falling $14-$65 behind the ADR’s of the competing destinations. Actual occupancy numbers thus far in 2007 are down anywhere from 3% to 22% depending upon the property.

The all important summer 2007 occupancy rates were again down or flat, with many of the smaller properties reporting declines in excess of 20%. Across the board ADR’s again remained flat or dropped 3-6%. For some pertinent related reading, check out our May 24, 2007 posting, “Chamber of Comedy Honcho Preparing Annual Excuse List.”

As is his standard operating procedure to grasp at any possible stat that might make him appear competent, like his 100% BS 97,000 lodging units, 14 million tourists, overly inflated “inquiries” and his convenient, yet unsubstantiated, “surveys,” Dean, in another feeble attempt to cover for his constant failures, now touts an up-tick in accommodation tax revenues, which is all just more of his usual “smoke and mirrors” misdirection.

The sad reality is that everything Dean touches is an abysmal failure, and despite all the “spinning” and “book cooking” from his flunkies, especially Myrtle Beach’s own “Fat Al” Parish wannabe, Gary Loftus, at Crooked Coastal Carolina, the dismal hotel numbers clearly evidence his inability to lead or market our floundering tourism industry.

The pride, integrity, successes, good will and concern for Chamber members, the Myrtle Beach area and South Carolina are all now, like Mr. Ward, just fond memories, sacrificed by Dean and his henchmen on their alter of corruption and unbridled greed. See our June 28, 2007 posting, RICO Leads New Myrtle Beach Chamber Membership Bendover.

Mr. Ward was all about teamwork, where Dean is all about how he can scrounge up the next “buck,” and blaming others for his inadequacies.

To be fair, Dean is just an accountant, who’s career highlight was managing the Hard Rock Café, so to expect someone with such mundane credentials to understand destination marketing, or to expect them to have the leadership qualities required to continue in Mr. Ward’s footsteps is truly a flight of absurd fantasy, and based upon Dean’s atrocious performance, one that regrettably the Myrtle Beach area is paying a very heavy price for so foolishly taking.

Sadly, this Bozo and his clown posse can’t even build a sandcastle without screwing up. Hell, they even brought in a bunch of red-robed monks, and even those guys couldn’t improve this circus’ ghastly performance.

One disillusioned Chamber Board member said, “With Ashby we were a team, with everyone having a good time, and pulling together for the common good of the entire Myrtle Beach area. Now it’s all about money, money, money. How much can we get, how fast can we get it and what hair-brained scheme can we spend it on? Its deplorable!”

Another former long-serving Board member who resigned in disgust stated, “Even when we had huge problems, like Hugo, Ashby made sure we all pulled together as a team for the common good. Brad and his crew, on the other hand, spend all of their time grubbing for money and stirring up petty intrigues and fostering divisiveness. I don’t understand it. We used to set goals, and we had fun working for them and accomplishing them, but those days are long gone. I’m very proud of my Chamber service, but I’m appalled and ashamed of today’s Chamber, and that’s why I quit the Board.”

Another Vice President of Marketing Quits after Only 5 Months

Recently the Redneck Rivera’s poster boy for tourism and marketing incompetence and the pudgy poobah of the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Comedy, announced that the Chamber’s newest Vice President of Marketing, Lauren Miller, was, after only 5-months, resigning.

While Gomer Pyle would say, “Surprise, surprise,” we at the Myrtle Beach Insider must sadly say, “We told you so!”

In our May 17, 2007 posting – Welcome Lauren Miller, We’ll Miss You! - we outlined precisely what a den of honky-tonk tourism twits she would be subjected to, and that she would quickly realize that she had made a monumental career blunder and swiftly depart.

To Ms. Miller’s credit, she wised-up to Dean and his posse’s incompetence and sleazy shenanigans a heck of a lot faster, than her equally unfortunate predecessors. Like the previous swinging door of predecessors, Ms. Miller, obviously refused to buy-in to Dean’s self-serving “Cash is my Jesus” agenda, and instead courageously threw his tainted Kool-Aid in his Howdy Doody puss and said, “Adios!”

On Dean’s 4-year, bush-league watch there has already been three Vice Presidents of Marketing to hit the road.

One of the few members of the Chamber’s dimwitted Advertising Committee with an IQ over 12 recently remarked, “Brad thinks nothing of playing Russian Roulette with people’s careers, and anyone foolish enough to think that there’s a future working for him will wake-up and find themselves sitting out on the curb with the homeless.”

Don’t you find all of these fall departures to be amazing coincidences? Do you see a pattern here? What’s the common denominator in all three of these marketing experts rapid exits?

The answer is obvious, the problem is Brad Dean and his simple-minded ship of fools.

Another abysmal year of Chamber bedlam, another fall and another Marketing VP exits, while we’re still stuck with the metastasizing cancer.

Brad Dean Crying Poverty While Cashing In Big Time

By the way, did we mention that in 2005 the Chamber’s mentally retarded Board led by then Chairman, Wayne Gray, shelled out a 30% raise, totaling $36,425, to the inept Dean, bringing his annual salary to $158,636, to go along with his $11,440 annual pension plan payment and his fat cat expense account.

To put Dean’s windfall in prospective, the Chamber’s budget in 2005 was only $6,248,395, with $5,212,917 coming from governmental sources, and only $929,578 coming from the Chamber membership.

The City of Myrtle Beach, on the other hand has an annual budget of $116, 996,675 – almost 19 times larger than the Chamber’s budget - and City Manager, Tom Leath’s salary is only a bit over $141,000 per year.

Horry County’s annual budget is $409,653,000 – almost 66 times larger than the Chamber’s budget - and County Administrator, Danny Knight’s annual salary is only slightly more than $142,000.

Did we mention that out of the Chamber’s $6,248,395 annual budget additional salaries and other employee benefits, excluding Dean’s gravy train, total another ridiculous $1,304,355?

That’s right, out of a budget of only $6,248,395, while Dean is simultaneously crying poverty and fleecing the Chamber at the same time, he’s blowing $1,474,431, or 25% of the Chamber budget on salaries and employee benefits.

So let’s get this straight, despite Dean’s litany of failures, the Myrtle Beach tourism industry in deep distress, and the Chamber always pleading poverty, the idiots on the Chamber’s Board think Dean deserves to be paid more than Leath and Knight for doing one-tenth of the work either one of them do, and that its just peachy to blow 25% ($1,474,431) of the Chamber’s total budget on salaries and employee benefits. Shades of Ken Lay and ENRON right here in our own backyard.

Dean’s big bucks bonanza is like paying the squeegee guy washing your windshield at the red-light more than the President of Wachovia Bank.

That’s not only insane, it’s downright criminal and the criminals are all sitting right up there on the Chamber Board!

Dean and His Henchmen Turn a Bloodsucker Loose in the Chamber Henhouse

Do you remember the “fantastic, great, brilliant” MYBeach advertising campaign that Dean and his henchmen rolled out to great fanfare in January of 2006 at the Marriott Resort?

Do you know how quickly it bombed, and how Dean and his minions scapegoated then Chamber Marketing Vice President, Theda Jackson, for its failure, when the real blame lies fully on the shoulders of Dean, Wayne Gray’s big spending Chamber Board, and the ignoramuses, like Leigh Meese, on the Chamber’s Advertising Committee. See our June 1, 2007 posting, “MyBeach Ad Campaign Bombs – Ad Agency Canned.”

Since May there has been no marketing strategy – not that there ever has been, since we prefer to fly by the seat of our pants with “Wrong Way” Dean at the stick - and in what can only be termed marketing suicide, Dean and his crew of rubes recently quietly awarded the Chamber’s precious advertising account to the biggest putz in the ad game, Scotty “Daddy’s Boy” Brandon.

That’s right the dunderhead who, with the help of Frans Mustart (See our June 16, 2007 posting, “The Destructions of the Ocean Forest Hotel and Myrtle Beach Golf Industry – Who Dunnit?”) destroyed the Myrtle Beach golf industry, resulting in nine straight years of losses (with still no relief in sight), the loss of an estimated one million annual paid rounds of golf, the closing of 23 golf courses and over 2,000 people losing their jobs, is now handling the Chamber’s ad account. Grab your ankles Myrtle Beach, because it’s going to be a very nasty night!

Now, again to be fair, Brandon, like Dean, has delusions of adequacy, and like Dean he has no business messing around in advertising or marketing. He graduated from law school, and when he couldn’t cut it in the legal field, his daddy, Cecil, who had a lifetime choke-hold on the areas most sought after license to steal, the Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday honey pot, took Scotty into the family business. Besides if the pussies that run Golf Holiday don’t have the balls to fire this catastrophic loser, then they deserve the screwing they’re getting.

To say that giving the most important marketing account in the area to the guy that eviscerated the Myrtle Beach golf industry is irresponsible and suicidal, is unquestionably the grossest of understatements.

One Golf Holiday Board member when he heard the shocking news said, “Holy cow, you’re kidding right? That’s impossible! The Brandon’s have plucked Golf Holiday to the bone, and have been sticking it to the golf industry for about 40-years, while they feathered their own nests. Now, I’d expect something dumb like this from Brad, because he’s always playing the suck-up card, but I would have hoped that somebody on the Chamber Board would have had more sense than to allow something this stupid from happening.”

Another Golf Holiday member quipped, “All you have to do to see who profits, and who gets shafted in dealing with the Brandon’s, is to compare offices, Golf Holiday operates out of a nondescript office, while the Brandon’s operate out of a palace. Every time I ride by it on the Bypass two words come to mind – rip-off. Now that the foxes are being turned loose in the Chamber’s henhouse, they’ll probably be adding a new wing onto their palace.”

To compare the poor foxes of the world to a pompous advertising pretender like Scotty Brandon is a terrible insult to the foxes, a vampire bat in the henhouse is a much more apropos description, because you can bet that, like Daddy and he have done to Golf Holiday, Junior will suck the Chamber’s coffers dry, without generating anything positive for the millions he and Dean will blow.

One very close friend of Mr. Ward summed up the Chamber’s latest incestuous marketing alliance this way, “Despite all that Cecil Brandon did to undermine him and the Chamber, Ashby was always a perfect gentleman to Cecil, and supported Cecil whenever he actually had a good idea, that others, beside Cecil, could benefit from. He told me, and others, for years, that the biggest setbacks that the Chamber’s marketing efforts ever experienced were when ad committees foolishly allowed Brandon to handle any of the Chamber’s marketing, and Brad knew that better than anyone. If Ashby were alive today I can guarantee you that the Chamber account would definitely not be in the hands of a Brandon, especially not Scott.”

Dean and Brandon Blow $225,000 for “Fun”

In what can only be termed sheer insanity, the first stupid thing Dean has already done to allow Brandon to start lining his pockets with Chamber cash, was to condone buying 20 billboards costing $11,250 each on I-95 that tell motorists how far they are from Myrtle Beach.

That’s right boys and girls, these morons are gleefully pissing away $225,000 on “mileage markers.” Yep, you heard me correctly, $11,250 “mileage markers.”

“We’re targeting the parents who were absolutely tired of hearing ‘Are we there yet!’ from the kids in the backseats,” gushed an obviously brain-dead Dean. What? Have you lost what’s left of your minimal grip on reality? Vacation decisions based upon kids whining in the backseat? That’s not only preposterous, its schizophrenic, and you’re an absolute idiot!

Blowing $225,000, “Was kind of a fun way to say, ‘Hey, we’re right here, we’re closer, and we’re just as much fun,” said a grinning Scotty Brandon as he rushed to cash the Chamber’s check.

Oh yeah, you’re right, let’s just keep on forgetting about sound research driven marketing ‘cause we’re all about “experimenting” with $225,000, and, more importantly, we’re all about “fun.” Whoopeeee!

Yes sir Mr. B, we get a real kick out of flushing $225,000 down yet another Brandon Advertising toilet.

Not only is this lame-brained farce blatantly wasteful, its kindergarten stupid advertising that Scotty says is, “Occupying our brains.” What in the hell are you talking about? Are you on Crack? $225,000 worth of Myrtle Beach Mileage Markers, what genius, what “fun!” What asses!

Shut-up and Suck it up!

So pathetic Chamber members, try and forget about the terrible realities of the Dean Debacle, as you sit there among the audience of grinning, glazed-eyed lemmings on Thursday at the Chamber’s Annual Back-Patting, Nose-Picking & BS Spinfest. Just sit there silently and choke down your $35 cold leg of capon, as Dean and his minions enlighten your small minds with what a magnificent job they are doing for you and all of the other equally clueless Chamber of Comedy members.

Forget about how your revenues and income have fallen, while your Chamber costs and Dean’s Wall Street salary have skyrocketed, because you’re damn lucky to have such enlightened, highly-paid visionaries leading your poor, ignorant souls out of the wilderness and into the glory of their collective genius.

Don’t sit there like a lump in the “cheap seats,” and worry about how your business is going to survive all of the Chamber’s failures and the ever worsening Grand Strand economic picture. Just sit there and listen to how “rosy” everything is going to be TOMORROW, and just keep on humming the theme song from Annie, and praying that the “sun really will come out tomorrow.”

Just because, the hype of MYBeach and all of other BS, pie-in-the-sky promises you’ve swallowed a thousand times before, have all turned out to be bold-faced lies, don’t panic, because this time it really is “going to be different.” This time St. Bradley, his rat pack and Scotty Brandon really are going to lead you down the yellow brick road to the Emerald City and “the land of milk and honey,” so shut the hell up, pay your jacked-up Chamber dues and surcharges and drink your damn Kool-Aid!

“Life is tough but it's tougher if you're stupid.” John Wayne

And so it goes on the Redneck Riviera!