October 11, 2007
Wanted: More Tourists in New York City
One of the city's biggest industries is the tourism, and the city announced a major push to keep the tourists coming in. Mayor Bloomberg and other officials kicked off the " first-ever global multimedia communications campaign to promote New York City." An advertising campaign titled "This is New York City" will features outdoor posters, internet advertising and a TV spot. Plus, the NYCVisit website features ways for visitors to plan their trip.
Bloomberg said, "Everyone who has visited the City already knows about our unparalleled diversity, excitement, culture, shopping and entertainment - but we want the rest of the world to know that our doors are open and there is something here for everyone to enjoy. With 'This is New York City,' our visually stunning and innovative marketing campaign...we will continue to build upon our successes and help us reach our goal of attracting 50 million tourists to the City by 2015."
The city will spend $30 million over one year to compete with other U.S. cities for tourism bucks (for instance, Las Vegas spends $127 million in advertising annually). Last year, NYC had 43.8 million visitors, which, according to the city, supported more than 350,000 jobs and had an annual economic impact of nearly $25 billion.
The TV spot is very charming and beautiful (see it here) and the posters are mostly pretty fun (see them after the jump). In the main poster, "This Is Just Another Day," which shows the vibrancy of the city, there are tons of references to city events (Mermaid Parade), buildings (Lipstick Building is lipstick) and life (messenger carrying a bike) . Also, we love the chicken playing the guitar! We noticed the "This is Entertainment" poster offers only one sports team - the Yankees (BURN!) - while "This is Food" has shout-outs to Le Cirque as well as Mud.
Posters, from left to right: "This is Just Another Day," "This is Entertainment," "This is Food," and "This is Fashion."
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This is disgusting.
Does Bloomberg know that we have to live here?
Why would he want to bring more trash into the city?
that guitar playing chicken confuses me.
any idea who did the posters? looks like it could be kevin barnes, the guy who used to do Of Montreal's layouts.
It's hard enough for me to shop at Century 21 without all those tourists. Now, where will I buy my knock-off designer ties?
We should be happy tourists still WANT to come here.
"This is New York City"? Is that the best they could come up with?!
can the mayor make Ground Zero a real legitimate tourist attraction?
maybe some signs telling tourist where it is, make it more tourist friendly because it really is an attraction to tourists for some reason.
seriously, does NYC need to advertise itself?
as a midwestener i frequent lower east side pay by the-hour-hotels, hookers and throwing up in cabs. I really think this speaks to my demographic.
Why is there a giant tomato attacking New York City?
Just turn it into a giant theme park. "New New York, better than beforrrre!"
/obscure?
P.S. Kevin Barnes is the frontman for Of Montreal; his brother does the artwork.
New York: This Is Bureaucracy. (Picture of Ground Zero)
this is idiotic, to say the least
all these visitors milling about just manage to accomplish one thing: further encouraging neighborhood-orientated businesses to turn their gaze instead toward tourist dollars.
instead of "flower taxis" why not just be honest and paint giant dollar$signs all over the place?
on some level, new york has always been about money, it's true.
the differnce is, now its only about money and the more the better
We really don't need the publicity...
I don't mind the tourists at all... they add a vibrant element to the city. The wonder in their eyes as they look up at the tall buildings. Or the stunned look on 34th & 7 looking at all the humanity in motion. Pretty cool.
Why would he want to bring more trash into the city?
They let you in.
If you hate tourists and want to be rude, move to Boston. They've gotten giving fake directions and being generally rude down to a science.
Well, with teh dollar falling like a rock, what's going to stop them from coming?
Why so many haters? What would YOU do?
Well, with the dollar falling like a rock, what's going to stop them?
As long as they are getting $1.50 for every Euro, who can blame them.
If you don't like this:
Blame GW Bush. Blame the war.
just to let you all know...90 percent of you were tourists at some point. then you moved to nyc.
you should be glad that most of these people are just visiting or else it could ruin your new found street cred.
Clarification: I don't hate tourists, I hate the city govenrnment's attitude towards us residents.
If they tried half as hard to keep us here and happy (those of us who are not raking in the millions), as they do to attract newcomers, I may not be so opposed to this whole thing.
And I am a native New Yorker. I can't go "home" if this doesn't work out.
From the angle the artist did it at, the Flatiron Building looks like a penis. Awesome.
I like how all the transplanted hipsters from brooklyn don't want any more of their ilk coming here! Without the tourists this city would return to the hell it was in the 70's. I'm grateful every day I see a crowd of bewildered visitors in awe of this great place, we should all be humbled that of all the places on this planet they have chosen nyc as their destination.
Lets see if there are better ways for the city to spend $30 million:
starting yearly salary for 1200 police officers
starting yearly salary for 824 firefighters
starting salary for 705 public school teachers
120 new fire engines
1200 new police cars
15 million bus/subway rides
or they could invest in a quarter share of transformers 2.
The campaign fails to deliver the two fundamental rules of effective advertising: namely, find reasons why a product or service are uniquely attractive to a target audience, and then communiciate them in ways that compel/movitate purchase. So we can talk about rebranding and creative nonsense until the streets are empty and quiet, and it really wouldn't matter. The ads in this campaign don't distill the real, tangible reasons why NYC is such a unique place to visit, but instead morph a menu of attributes into incomprehensible and generic content (fashion can be found in any city, as can food, for instance). And then there's nothing compelling in the artsy cartoon treatment that says 'you need to visit this place now.' Tourism is about getting bodies onto airplanes and into hotels. I'm surprised this campaign ever got past the bright bulbs that should have been vetting ideas against this simple deliverable. I've written a bit about it, along with what NYC & Co. could have done differently, at DIM BULB (at) typepad (dot) com.