The Hartford Business Journal is planning a billboard campaign across the region, touting “The Paper That Brings You Cohen the Columnist.”
It’s part of a larger strategy that will make it all about Cohen; you won’t be able to think about the Business Journal without thinking about, well, you know.
It’s called “branding,” and it’s all the rage, especially when you’re peddling consumer products and services. If it works, it’s a juggernaut of consumer spending and desire.
Consider Budweiser, for instance. With a brand like that, you can sell Bud, Bud Light, Bud Light With Lemon or Lime or Stuff.
The travel-and-tourism folks lust after successful branding, ever since the “I Love New York” thing took the world by storm. To be honest, much of the travel branding has been mediocre to awful; it’s just not easy to capture a city or state or region’s tourism ambiance in a slogan or a jingle or even a really handsome photo of Cohen the Columnist.
Another challenge is how to measure the marginal value of that next dollar spent on tourism marketing. Is it a pretty map or a snappy jingle played 8,000 times on regional radio stations or is it traditional site-location ads in travel magazines that do the job? What happens if you spent an extra $15 on marketing? Or, as Connecticut tried for several years, what if you cut the state travel marketing budget to zero?
This year, Connecticut has coughed up about $15 million for a new branding effort, known adoringly as “Still Revolutionary.” Potential visitors might learn that much in Connecticut is very, very old; that George Washington must have slept here somewhere; and that if and when you come, you will be subjected to an agonizing lecture about Connecticut’s special role in Constitutional history — which is at least as interesting as a ride at a Disney amusement park.
It’s a gamble, this “revolutionary” gambit. While Williamsburg and Sturbridge and Philadelphia and Salem, Mass. (the witch trial stuff) know how to market history as fun, as entertainment, Connecticut has fewer tools to work with. In the initial explanations, it sort of sounds as if coming to Connecticut to soak up history is like reading the Bible or taking your vitamins: it’s something you should do, because it’s good for you.
“Still Revolutionary” also hints at wild and crazy innovation for tourists in the here and now. That may be a stretch; this is a state that doesn’t even let its bars stay open late. This state is so anti-revolutionary that the citizenry isn’t even allowed to initiate a state-wide referendum.
It’s not just Connecticut, of course, Almost every state has had its mumbling, fumbling travel-and-tourism marketing over the years. The current effort by New Mexico, which, in case you somehow missed it, is dubbed “New Mexico True,” asks the important tourism question: huh?
There is hope for the Connecticut campaign, if it doesn’t get too caught up in the “revolutionary” thing and focuses on simply making state history fun. Put tourists on trial for dressing ugly and sentence them to 15 minutes locked in the Old State House pillory. For $500, let one person a day smoke a cigar inside the Mark Twain House, just like Sam Clemens did. Stage mock debates featuring a modern-day Congregational minister arguing that the church should still be in charge of Connecticut, just like the good-old-days. Stuff like that.
In the meantime, watch for my face on those billboards. Wow. It must be a hell of a newspaper.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
