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." Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/