So it looks like the United States has finally decided to join the civilized world and have an advertising campaign promoting itself as a tourist destination. Granted, they didn’t really need such a campaign, as most of the world loved to come to America anyway (See: Ellis Island, “roads paved with gold”, etc….) but I’m sure it couldn’t hurt to have a united front to show people what is so great about America!
Let’s take a look at this campaign…I bet it’ll be awesome and cool and all that jazz.
What’s the name again? United States of…Awesome Possibilities? Really? Yikes…we couldn’t have come up with something better? It didn’t NEED to included “United States of” as part of the name of the campaign. Screw it, I’m comparing this to Iceland Wants To Be Your Friend.
Okay cool, Icelands campaign has the name of the country in it as well, but at least it wasn’t a cheesy title! Iceland wants to be your friend implies a warmness, a friendliness, an approachability that is just not present when you title your campaign “Awesome Possibilities”. You just didn’t try very hard. Plus, what I enjoy the most about the Iceland campaign title is that it’s not necessarily about what’s so amazing about Iceland, but that Iceland wants to converse with you. United States of Awesome Possibilities implies (to me) that the campaign will essentially be a more national version of something cheesy like Pure Michigan. yikes! Why can’t America do something fun?
I’m really hoping they do something innovative or at least interesting with how they market themselves. Right now, it seems very plain and uninteresting. However, if they were to take a page from Iceland wants to be your friend, I hope they make it about a story – a story about the United States and it’s people. And that it encourages conversation – one of the best things about Icelands campaign is that it carried a conversation with the audience and included them as part of it’s story.
Overall, it might take a lot of convincing to get people to visit the United States of Aweso…America. While we may be a destination for a lot of people, many others find us to be an abhorrent nation and would never support travel and tourism here. We must target those who might be willing to spend their money in America, but are unsure as to whether or not they want to. Rather than change the minds of those who don’t like America, we have to work to convince those on the fence to just suck it up and visit!
I’ll probably be watching this campaign really closely and comparing it for a while to Iceland Wants To be Your Friend. This might seem unfair, but I’m already thinking Icelands campaign is gonna kick ass compared to United States of Awesome Possibilities.