Somebody in West Bygod gets it
28th March 2007 by Sam Smith
Check this wonderful bit about the new West Virginia Tourism campaign:
Readers flipping through the newest edition of O, The Oprah Magazine might stumble upon an ad headline that reads, “Whatever you do, don’t come to West Virginia!”
If you’re a Mountaineer, don’t be offended.
The West Virginia Division of Tourism and Charles Ryan Associates are trying a new marketing technique.
The ads are meant to lure vacationers to the Mountain State.
Officials say standard travel ads, such as a picture of a mountainside and a message to “Visit West Virginia,” don’t really do the trick anymore. (Story.)
I love the creative approach, but cannot imagine how they got it executed. I’ve worked with more timid ad people - both in agencies and in the corporate groups that manage advertising - in the past few years than I can shake a stick at, and had I taken a concept like this one to the principal at the last agency I worked for the best I could have hoped for was an extended, exasperated whine about how I just don’t get it.
On the planet these folks live on, you can’t take any risk of acknowledging any kind of possible negative at all. Even if you know that your target audience spends hours a day bad-mouthing your client, the last thing you can do is acknowledge that reality. Right now my old boss would probably be advising the good folks at Menu Foods (and their clients at Iams, Nutro, Hills, etc.) to carry on as though nothing unusual had happened in the last couple of weeks
Of course, those of us with an informed acquaintance of how real audiences actually work know that the single dumbest thing corporate communications of any sort can do is to ignore what their audiences already know.
Pretend bad news doesn’t exist, and they’ll pretend you don’t exist.
Hats off to the West Virginia Division of Tourism and Charles Ryan Associates. They get it. Selling West Virginia isn’t the easiest job in the world, but I’m betting they get significantly better results than the folks over at The Conventional Timid and Terrified Group.
March 28th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Any idea how many IABC membrs have anything important to do with advertising of products and services?
Andhow many have anything to do with corporate advertising, perhaps even knowing what the diffrence between corporate advertising and product and service advertising is?
BAK
March 28th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
No, but it’s a good question.
April 1st, 2007 at 6:18 pm
When I’m badmouthing advertisers, I usually am badmouthing how in the pocket of their agencies they are; this West Virginia Tourism ad might be exhibit A of dumb campaigns they’ve been convinced to use by their agencies. Sometimes I badmouth agencies for not understanding their clients and only wanting to win awards; this ad certainly sounds tilted towards the awards shows, and not to the clients business.
The typical reader of those ads would look at the headline, think for maybe 0.1 second, and conclude, “Okay.” They then make plans for having their vacations in other states.
Smith’s analogy to the Menu Foods crisis is false in that, until the advertising ran, no one had any reason to avoid going to WV for their vacation: no one ever died from going on vacation in WV. The ad gives its : WV doesn’t want them.
I suspect that there’s some kind of politics going on here: the WV Tourism Director will get a lot of flack from the tourism industry for this ad, but since (I guess) he’s appointed not by WV tourism businesses but by the governor, he’s probably pretty insulated from those pressures. Maybe the WV Tourism Council is funded by a tax, and he’s trying to get rid of it–this ad could do that. Maybe the Tourism council supported the loser in the last governor’s election, and this is the way of the winner getting back at the industry for that support.
While there’s a lot of dull and unoriginal travel and tourism advertising, doing something stupid isn’t the cure for that, and Smith seems to confuse “stupid” with creative.
April 1st, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Nothing personal, Rick, but this is one where you’re simply wrong. The very idea of going to WV on vacation is a joke to most - really, if the Clintons and Wal*Mart hadn’t elevated Arkansas’ national profile WV would still be the butt of EVERY hillbilly joke in America. So the only way to credibly promote around that is to begin by acknowledging that yeah, we know the stereotype. Establish common ground with the audience, and in doing so, you de facto demonstrate that, by the way, maybe you aren’t like the stereotype would suggest.
This buys you a fresh look, and that’s exactly what you need.
Are there better campaign ideas out there? Maybe - probably. My suspicion is that there’s ALWAYS a better idea that nobody came up with. But that doesn’t diminish the fact that this is a campaign that helps a state address its image problem. I’ll be interested in checking back in a couple years, because I expect this campaign to prove my point in measurable tourism dollars.
(And there was no “analogy” to Menu Foods. I was noting that people who think a certain way tend to manifest in a particular set of ways.)
April 20th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Well, I “get” it. I understand Rick’s POV, of course, but, just like those who don’t like the approach, others like it.
Is it too “cute”? Depends, doesn’t it, on what their research says and how their specific target publics reacted in tests and how well the campaign helps them meet their measurable objectives?
If it works, it doesn’t matter that Rick wouldn’t use it; if it doesn’t, then my opinion is of no moment.
I guess it would be too “over the top” for the “Don’t come to West Virginia” crowd to really go out on a limb with something like [insensitivity alert!] “Blacksburg is in the other Virginia; you’ll be safe here!”[/alert]