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Chamber responds:

Subhead
Stop the hate, respect volunteers, be informed, love the life in Luverne
By
Jane Wildung-Lanphere, Luverne Area Chamber Director

I strongly felt that I needed to respond in defense of the wonderful men and women who have volunteered and are serving on the Destination Branding Committee for Luverne Initiatives for Tomorrow. 
If you are a social media person (I admit that I am not), you probably have heard of the negative comments, hatred and hype that has been focused on the work that these volunteers are doing trying to attract visitors to Luverne using the nutcracker theme.
Even at the fair, there were several instances of people saying inappropriate things to some of the vendors … and one of them isn’t even on the committee.
I believe that the negative comments will only hurt Luverne, so I respectfully ask you to help me. 
Six pages of the August edition of Chamber Chatter (which can be reached through the Chamber website) tries to explain the difference between a visitor marketing campaign and the Luverne brand. I hope that you will take the time to read through the articles. 
The Destination Branding Committee is simply working on a new marketing ploy to draw new and more visitor traffic to Luverne.
They are not taking over the town and they are not using any public money in their work. I would appreciate it very much, for the good of our community, that you use the information in this edition to lower the negative comments to something more like constructive criticism. 
We all need to respect each other and that is why the committee chose not to respond on social media or in the newspaper.
They are trying to respond by educating people about the process and the work that has gone on to get to where we are now.
I would also invite you to give me a call if something in the article seems confusing to you.  I would be happy to visit with you personally to try to better explain it. 
Thank you for supporting this great community where we live, work and play.

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