While there appears to be a rush to judgment to blame the BOHAN ad agency and its $278,000 30-second spot on Steve Hayes, the new tourism vice president for the Greater Pensacola Chamber, many are overlooking that it was Terry Scruggs that guided the process that hired the Nashville-based agency and who worked on the firm’s 2012-13 budget.
And Scruggs is the one the chamber wants to hire to run the organization, on an interim basis, while it searches for a new president to replace Jim Hizer, whose contract ends August 15.
Scruggs didn’t pick BOHAN, but he was the interim vice president who ran Visit Pensacola when a subcommittee of the Tourism Administration and Convention Committee (TACC) selected BOHAN Advertising out of Nashville, Tenn., and Majority Opinion Research out of Atlanta to provide Visit Pensacola with advertising/public relations and research services, respectively.
Scruggs worked on the agency’s budget for Visit Pensacola that began Oct. 1, 2012.
In an announcement that was released June 2012 on the selection of BOHAN, Scruggs said, “We are committed to taking tourism in the Pensacola Bay Area to the next level in innovative and creative ways through an integrated research-based marketing and advertising program.â€
People want to point the finger at Hizer and Hayes. Maybe they are looking in the wrong direction.