October 11, 2007
City's Virtues to Be Sold in New Global Ad Campaign
By PATRICK McGEEHAN
New York City has historically relied on its own magnetism to draw
visitors from around the country and the world. But now, the home of
Madison Avenue is going to try advertising itself in a big, broad way.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled the city's first global
advertising campaign yesterday in Times Square. The campaign, which
carries the theme "This is New York City," includes a television ad
that will be the first to promote the city to potential visitors who
live overseas.
It is the latest weapon aimed at hitting the mayor's target of
increasing the number of visitors to 50 million a year by 2015. Last
year, the city drew 43.8 million visitors, more than in any previous
year, according to NYC & Company, the city's tourism promotion agency.
To reach that goal, NYC & Company plans to place billboards in cities
across America and Europe and to broadcast its new commercial in
Britain, Ireland and Spain, on local TV stations in Philadelphia and
Boston, and on the History Channel.
George Fertitta, the chief executive of NYC & Company, said the ad
placements would be worth about $30 million, but would cost the agency
less than $5 million in cash because many of them were arranged
through trades.
The city's contract with Cemusa, a provider of bus shelters and other
structures, gives it hundreds of billboards that it can swap for
advertising space on the streets of several European cities. Much of
the money for the campaign is coming from the city budget.
When he set his tourism target a couple of years ago, Mr. Bloomberg
pledged to increase spending on tourism promotion by $15 million a
year. Historically, NYC & Company received most of its funds from
hotel operators and other companies in the travel and tourism
industries. The agency organized promotions but had never created a
comprehensive campaign on a par with New York State's long-running "I
Love New York" ads.
Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday that it was time to recognize how
important tourism is to the city's economy and to try to increase it
at a time when a weak dollar is making the city more affordable to
foreigners.
"People are shocked to find that what they thought was a very
expensive city isn't all that expensive," Mr. Bloomberg said.
Mr. Bloomberg said the city was competing for tourist dollars against
other destinations, like Las Vegas, that spend far more. The Las Vegas
Convention and Visitors Authority has an annual marketing budget of
$127 million, about $86 million of which goes toward advertising
around the world, according to Vince Alberta, a spokesman for the
authority.
Las Vegas, which uses the slogan "What happens here stays here," also
has a big goal. It hopes to attract 43 million visitors annually by
the end of the decade, Mr. Alberta said.
In contrast to Las Vegas's attractions, what New York has to offer is
more difficult to summarize, city officials said. Daniel Doctoroff,
the deputy mayor for economic development, recounted the difficulty
that the writer E. B. White had in defining the city in his 1949 essay
"Here is New York."
White called it a "concentrate of art and commerce and sport and
religion and entertainment and finance." But Mr. Doctoroff said, "How
do you turn that into a marketing campaign?"
He said the officials decided that in order "to get at New York's
core, you simply have to let New York speak for itself." So the theme
of the ads is simply "This is New York City," and the ads combine
images of the city like the Statue of Liberty, Yankee Stadium and the
Brooklyn Bridge with animated symbols meant to spark a viewer's
imagination.
"This is targeted to the excitement of New York City," Mr. Bloomberg
said. "It's a lot more upbeat than just `I Love New York.'"
Mr. Fertitta of NYC & Company said the ads were intended to "allow
people to see the extraordinary abundance" of the city. "We don't need
to come up with a real slogan that's designed to convince somebody of
something."
The TV ad is set to a remix of Ella Fitzgerald's rendition of "Take
the A Train." The music and the animation were intended to "have you
feel it yourself," said Kevin Roddy, the executive creative director
of BBH, the agency that made the ads. "New York is such an active
city," Mr. Roddy said. "We wanted to do advertising that did something."
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