Larry sits down with Brittany Kenner, marketing director for Murray, Kentucky — the self-proclaimed friendliest small town in America, home to Murray State University and a tourism office of exactly two people running the whole show. Brittany's through-line is that a small budget and a small team aren't a handicap so much as a forcing function: when you can't buy your way into attention, you get very good at earning it. Her headline take is that social engagement isn't dying, it's relocating. The public likes and comments are down, but the real conversations have quietly slipped into DMs and shares — and chasing vanity metrics means missing where the actual interest now lives.

From there it's a clinic in scrappy, place-led marketing: treating Instagram and TikTok like the search engines they've quietly become, putting paid dollars where they actually convert (Spotify and Facebook, not TikTok), and being your own influencer when you can't afford to rent one. Brittany also digs into building a destination brand from the ground up with no marquee attraction to lean on, the genuine synergy she's built with the university, and a charmingly low-tech visitor-guide campaign she hand-addressed herself — Hallmark-movie energy with a real marketing brain behind it.

In this episode:

• 00:06 - Introduction to Aqua Talks
• 03:22 - Transitioning to Trends in Community Marketing
• 08:07 - The Charm of Small Town Connections
• 13:23 - Building a Tourism Strategy
• 16:42 - Partnerships in Tourism and Community Engagement
• 18:24 - Exploring Visitor Engagement Strategies

Key Takeaways:

• Engagement didn't die, it moved to the DMs: Public likes and comments are down, but conversations shifted to DMs and shares — so Brittany leans into shareable content and an Instagram broadcast channel.
• Social is the new search engine: People use TikTok and Instagram to plan trips now, not just scroll.
• Spend where it converts: Small paid budget goes to Spotify and Facebook, not TikTok.
• Be your own influencer: Brittany and her intern became the faces of the town — cheaper than paid influencers and a local-goodwill bonus.
• Building a brand with no marquee attraction: No festival fanbase or big-city draw to coast on — the work is finding people who genuinely love the place.
• The university is the ultimate partner: A board seat, joint rankings wins, and real content give-and-take.
• Find partners who get small-market tourism: Most agency pitches assume an attraction and audience that tiny towns don't have.
• Case study — the hand-addressed visitor guide: A simple social + Spotify push, guides addressed by hand, riding the Kindness Matters murals' Good Housekeeping feature.

About Our Guest:

Brittany Kenner (Murray CVB site)

Director of Marketing & Communications

Brittany moved to Murray in 2020 and went on to earn a Bachelor of Science in Public Relations from Murray State University. She brings a fresh, energetic perspective to her role as Director of Marketing with the CVB. Her time as an Account Manager at Bauer Entertainment Marketing gave her a solid grounding in brand strategy, the hospitality world, and content creation — all of it central to putting the MKY on the map. Outside of work, you'll find Brittany spending time with her family or out enjoying a good music festival.

Welcome to Aqua Talks where marketing meets bold game changing ideas.

Join your hosts, Larry Aldrich and Maddie Dudley as they explore the art and science of cutting through the noise, capturing attention and fostering meaningful connections with your audience.

Whether you're a destination marketer, government contractor, or simply passionate about the transformative power of marketing, Aqua Talks offers engaging discussions, fresh insights and actionable strategies designed to inspire and inform.

Today we're coming to you from Louisville, Kentucky live at the Etourism conference. We're going to be talking to some great DMOs today and some vendors, so stay tuned.

Hello, thank you again for watching Aqua Talks and listening to Aqua Talks. Now. We're here with Brittany Kenner. Hello, Brittany. Hi, Brittany. What CVB do you represent?

So I am from Murray, Kentucky. We are a small town in Western Kentucky. We are home to Murray State University.

So we get a bit of all sides from people who are interested in small town life. And we've actually been named the friendliest small town in America. So we get a lot of people for that.

And then also people coming in for Murray State University and then conferences and things like that around it too.

I follow a lot of professional college sports and Murray State University was one of those. Actually. I got letters from them and I never knew that was where that was. So thank you. Just, just educated me.

Yeah. Home of Ja Morant. I don't know if that's exactly the person that we love being home of, but he loves Murray and we love him.

Did you say Joe Morant?

John Morant.

John Morant in basketball.

Yeah.

I mean, he's pretty good.

Yeah, he's. He's great. He is currently a Memphis Grizzly.

Yes, he is.

We don't know that he will be next season. I think he's kind of gearing up to be traded, but that'll be fun.

Either way, anywhere we go, we kind of get a shoes up from people who are familiar with Murray State because that's kind of their, their thing. They're the racers.

So now that I know where Murray State was, I never really knew, but that's part of what this podcast is. We're always learning everything. And to go back to a little bit, you're. You're the marketing and communications director, Right? Okay.

Because we wanted to make sure we got. Got your title out there.

Absolutely. Yeah. We're a tiny office of two. So we've got an executive director and then me as the marketing director, kind of do a little bit of everything.

Really, really hands on and involved in anything and everything that Happens in the community.

So we work with a lot of CVB's and DMOS of all sizes and every one of them are important, important. And we work with every one of them as if they are, you know, the best. Yeah, that's how we look at it. Because a destination is cvb.

I mean, their job is to take care of their visitors, they take care of their community and we help promote that, we help move that along. So regardless of the size, we work with all of them and they're all important.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we wanna move our segment a little bit to trends. Is there a trend in the industry or something that's going on that's really close to you?

Yeah, I actually like to say that I specialize in social media. Again, I kind of do a little bit of everything, but social is where my heart lies.

Um, and recently we've seen a huge trend of general engagement across the board going down on social. So people are getting less likes, less clicks, less comments. However, those conversations aren't gone, they've just moved.

So people are sharing content in DMs and then through that, having those conversations there.

So some of what we've been doing to kind of combat those lower engagement numbers, but really still keep the conversation going is a lot of that story driven content. Things that are very shareable.

So places to eat, places to get coffee, fun things that the college students specifically will send via dm obviously to their friends. And then a lot of we started a broadcast channel on Instagram to kind of keep that conversation in the DMs.

Instagram's recently moved the inbox to the bottom row and that's kind of what's fueling that I think too. So a lot of those conversations are just moving. And then a lot of my job has been recently to kind of educate on our board and our city of.

Just because you're seeing less comments on the post doesn't mean that the engagement is necessarily going down. It's just moving and changing.

Are you seeing a lot of that movement or that change because your destination or your CVB is in a college town, so that's more of a generational thing.

I think that might have something to do with it. Yeah. We're also seeing just in general the way that people are interacting with content changing.

So post Covid, which I hate saying, we're six years out in a post Covid world, like we've got TikTok now, we've got reels have taken off like crazy and a lot of those social platforms are being used as search engines. So people aren't just going to social to look for fun, pretty content. They're going there for a purpose.

And a lot of that is planning what you're doing and where you're going and coming up with new ideas of things to do and see. So a lot of that is just collaborative in nature. So instead of tagging somebody in the comments, we're kind of just sharing it naturally.

So with those changes you see, does it affect where you put your resources and how you allocate your funds?

Yeah, we obviously are a very small town, so we have a pretty small budget in terms of anything paid.

And so I tend to make sure that anything we're putting money behind is really going to show that impact to our board and our city and really get to our end goal of extending overnight stays, getting new people in our town and ultimately impacting the economy. So we don't tend to run anything paid on TikTok currently just because it's not a conversion driver.

So a lot of our paid goes on to things like Spotify or Facebook specifically. We don't run as much on Instagram either.

What's some about your destination that people don't know that you might want to get out there or that you want them to focus on that they just don't know about yet?

Yeah. So I think my favorite thing about Murray, I've been there for about six years. I grew up not too far from there, about 45 minutes north.

But I've always kind of known it as a college town and just kind of small town in western Kentucky. Right. It is very much that. It's like I said, friendliest small town in America.

We were just recently named top three best small college towns in the country. And so there's no like shortage of kindness and people who are willing to kind of help and give you whatever resources they can.

But I don't think I realized just how much that person to person contact really impacts somebody's experience in a destination. You come to a bigger city and you're not getting that like personal. You're walking down the street, somebody's going to recommend you something.

And that's pretty rare. And in Murray, that is an everyday thing.

You go eat breakfast at Rudy's on the square and you're going to have hours, long conversations with the locals who are there all the time.

And really that it kind of feels like if you mix a Hallmark movie with just the cutest little small town you've ever seen on social and it Is it's that and those emotional connections that you create to the people really matter.

With influencer marketing being such a big component of marketing, destination marketing today, how do you see that in yours, in Murray? Is that something you use, something you plan on doing more?

Yeah, we've worked with a couple of influencers in the past. Typically people who bounce around towns in Kentucky specifically just because it kind of matches their content already.

And then, you know, some people who are really into that small town vibe and really want to showcase that, like, friendly, welcoming atmosphere, family friendly, things like that. Influencers are obviously typically very expensive.

And like I said, we have a pretty small budget, so we tend to use those campaigns very sparingly and implement that where we can. But it's not something that we get to do super frequently. So.

So a lot of our kind of influencer style content is just people who come in and really, really like the town and they post about it and we're not necessarily paying for that, which is great. And I love that.

I also joke that me and our intern are the influencers of the town just because we are out constantly doing all of the things and creating that content. So we get to play influencers.

I'm going to be an influencer next.

Week at the NFL draft, and it's a great time.

Yeah, I called, I contacted my PR director, my social media director, and I wanted their input. I was like, I think we should get an influencer to come to Pittsburgh right now.

We don't have any clients in Pittsburgh and the NFL draft is going to be there. I mean, it's a huge opportunity.

Million people are going to come into Pittsburgh for a long weekend from all over the country, and everything's going to be crazy and packed and so much going on. It's a great opportunity to showcase the city, the events, the NFL and every city in the country can, you know, probably just enjoy saying that.

So tell me about getting an influencer. What kind of influencers should we get to do this? And both of them said, you obviously,.

You know what you're doing and you know the community and what you want it to look like.

And I think that's kind of where I got to a point with the social content, where I was like, okay, well, we really need somebody to go show, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Well, nobody's gonna be able to just like pick it up organically without us bringing in someone paid, which we can't always afford and do exactly what we want. So I was like, well, I'll just go do It. Yeah, I'll just do it. It works and it does.

It also, I think helps on the local side of our social too because I joke that we have two audiences, the people that live there already and they are heavy on Facebook and Instagram and then those who are coming and want to see and learn more about what we have before they get there. So that's, you know, we've got the Missouri Valley Baseball tournament coming up and we're hosting that in Murray.

So we've got parents of college baseball kids coming in by the thousands. So. So they want to know what we have to offer.

But we get to kind of play into that goodwill of the community as well when it's our face on some of it and they're already familiar with us. So our local audience is more likely to engage and have a great time in the comments too. And that really helps push engagements.

Is there any big initiatives that it will be important for you, your team to look at for 26, 27?

Yeah. So right now we are, like I said, gearing up for the Missouri Valley Baseball Tournament.

Fingers crossed that the Racers can pull it out and we win that again and then potentially host again in the future. We are also kind of just at any given moment working with the university and athletics and the educational side to bring in.

We're at the orientations, we are at any event that they have going on.

We set up welcome tables, things like that, just to get the people who are coming in for conferences or visits or whatever that is to really enjoy their time and want to stay and keep coming back. So a lot of what we're doing now is kind of building on the momentum that we already have.

And that's our plan for the next few months at least just to really continue building and putting together a good rapport repository of content too that we can use in the future because we don't typically have. We have a ton of, you know, like local business content, downtown farmer's market, really cute, very aesthetic shots.

But we don't always have a sporting event or something like that that we have fan shots of or things. So kind of building a lot of that content repository as well.

What's a challenge that isn't talked about enough in tourism market marketing?

I think the thing that I've come across, so I have agency experience before tourism, I worked at an entertainment marketing agency and I did music festivals. You have a built in audience already with that. You have the bands and the artists. People already love them. They will come no matter what.

So with A place like Murray. We are building that from the ground up. And a lot of bigger cities kind of already have some of that.

They've got like Lexington has horses and Louisville has everything that Louisville has. We're in Louisville right now. So you have that kind of audience already built in and we don't necessarily have that.

So kind of building that from the ground up and creating people who. And finding people who really, really love what we have to offer and could see themselves coming back.

If you had an unlimited budget for one initiative, and I were dreaming here, what would that be?

Oh, gosh. There is currently our Main street program.

It's a nonprofit and they are working on creating and renovating a historic building downtown on the square into a conference center. And it's going to be a multi use building.

The place plan is to have kind of like restaurants and bars in it, a full conference space, a black box theater. All of the things.

I think I would push as much as I could into that because we have minimal funds to be able to kind of really push that from our side. And that's a nonprofit. And so nonprofits have it even harder than we do.

So I would push as much as I could into that so that we could bring in more events and more conferences and bigger things.

What kind of partner makes your life easier? Partner can be, you know, you're a local partner in the community, a business partner, a partner that helps with marketing. I know you said you're.

You're an office of two.

Yeah.

What kind of partner would make your life easier?

That's a great question. I think just having someone. And we are really lucky that all of the people that we kind of do work with on a regular basis kind of get it.

But having someone that gets not just tourism, but tourism in a really small area and tourism for a place that doesn't necessarily have a, you know, a place in our backyard that we can. An attraction to send people to. We don't have an amusement park. We don't have, you know, a big area where you can hold concerts and things like that.

So a lot of ours is ground up and having somebody that understands that because I know that's when we get kind of like scouted by agencies who want to help. That's a lot of the. Okay, well, we're going to give you recommendations for all of these things.

And none of those recommendations kind of even come close to applying to what we do just because we don't have. Have that built in attraction and audience already.

Yeah. With the university there Other than the sporting events, how does the university understand tourism and working with you?

I mean, is that a positive relationship when it comes to tourism?

We work really closely with the university. Like I said, we're kind of at all of their orientations.

We are at every single new student event and parent weekend and, and all of the games, all of that. So we also have somebody from the university on our board of directors. So that also really helps kind of keep that relationship going.

But like I said, we were just named top three best small college town in the country. And that was entirely a partnership between us and the university, putting that content. Content together and getting it out.

And they are at a drop of a hat, willing to help us with whatever initiatives, whether that is, hey, so and so I need content of this. They'll send it over. If they don't have it, we go and they won't film it. They're really, really helpful with anything that we ask for.

And then to reciprocate, we, you know, help with here the locations we have geofencing set up from the university maybe doesn't have something like that. So we'll kind of share some of that information and help them with, you know, guiding where they need to have alumni events and things like that.

So we try to be as have as much synergy as possible to make it work because we couldn't do what we do without them. And I think the same could be said.

Yeah, yeah. Going to a case study. Is there a case study that sticks out that you'd like to.

About.

Talk. Talk about?

Yeah. So we actually just finished up a campaign to send out our visitor guide, which is a super simple campaign.

I understand that, but we are working on a new visitor guide. So we've got boxes of our current visitor guide. And I was like, I don't want to just like get rid of them to people who don't want them, obviously.

So I put together social ads and then a Spotify campaign to kind of go along with that, along with our social and website content that goes with it too, to really push, hey, visitor guides are available. Request your visitor guide. Now. We had I hand address all of our visitor guides because, I mean, we're a small town and I can.

I sat there for like days out of the week, every week, just like writing out addresses on visitor guides. And it was just really simple content of like, here's our farmers market, here's what downtown looks like. Here's the arboretum.

Like, here are the things that you can do. Family friendly, free, like, enjoy your time here. We have a series of murals around downtown and they're called the Kindness Matters murals.

And they were also just featured in Good Housekeeping recently. So that kind of went out at the same time and we were featuring the murals and a lot of things.

So really that like aesthetic piece but also like, hey, it's a really small town and I think you would love it if you came. And so just really pushing those like get your visitor guide, see why we love it. And that seemed to really, really resonate.

So other than aquatox.com where we'll have your bio, we'll have your links, we'll have a little bit about your cvb. If you wanted people to come learn more about you, where would you send them?

Yeah. So we are on all socials, Murray Kentucky and then our website is tourmurray.com anything and everything will be available there or on socials.

We try to keep everything as cross platform as possible. Alternatively, if you're ever in Western Kentucky, we have a visitor center on the south square downtown. I personally think it's really cute.

You're more than welcome to stop in and pick up some stickers and postcards and collateral and all of the things. So.

Well, thank you. Thank you, Brittany. It was very nice speaking with you and you can come to Aqua Talks.

Learn more about Brittany and Murray CVB and you can also go to the links that Brittany just gave me.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you. Foreign.

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