Inviting bloggers to the party
You may not know this but Columbus is a major blogging city. It’s true — according to Scarborough Research, we’re number eight on the list (a list topped by not-surprising entrants like Austin, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle) sharing with those cities a tech-friendly environment and lots of internet access. Likely we skew higher, too, because OSU is the largest university in the country, which means we have lots of young adults with the blogging and the twittering and the myspace-ing around here.
The local marketing world has been paying attention (as have I, note: Open Book Strategies) and the other night the good folks at Experience Columbus invited the central Ohio blogosphere to check out their new ad campaign.
Now just like you probably didn’t know that Columbus is so bloggy, there’s probably a whole lot of other stuff you don’t know about us like we’re artsy as hell and incredibly gay-friendly (I’ve been told we’re the San Fransisco of the midwest) and pretty darn diverse. We’re a nice city (minus the humidity) — affordable, great housing, low traffic — and lately lots of different powerful folks have been wrestling around trying to figure out how to make sure you all know that. I’ve been in on a number of different talks about it lately and everyone has their own take. It’ll be very interesting to see where we are in ten years.
(Mind you, I’ve lived here for 25 years (moved here when I was eight, five years in Portland, OR — a city that really knows how to work their brand) and I’ve heard this noise before. I think sometimes the newcomers with the unbridled enthusiasm about our fair city don’t know the fatigue of living through the AmeriFlora debacle or being the subject of a critical documentary on gentrification. Sometimes the recently relocated aren’t so patient with us but they gotta appreciate our caution.)
There is much to love here but sometimes it seems like the powers that be are the last to know it. No wonder Columbus Ohio ends up being an insider joke on Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. (One of the writers hailing from Columbus brings his folks in for a tour. When they meet D. L. Hughley the mother stumbles, “We love Sidney Poitier.” Because we don’t have black people in Columbus. Right.)
So the Experience Columbus planners have their work cut out for them. How to get past our mundane, farm-centric, cowpoke reputation? Especially when what’s unique about us somehow doesn’t seem bold enough to grab attention? (We do have some great attention-grabbing stuff though, most notably the Short North, one of our few attractions that isn’t beholden to a big corporation. And we’re also well known in the gay community as a terrific city having been touted in gay magazines since at least the early eighties.)
Their answer was to start a campaign about what we don’t have. Like we don’t have the Eiffel Tower or mermaids or mountains. There’s a really terrible youtube channel — the vidoes will evoke snickers in those of us who live in Columbus and get the joke but aren’t funny enough to forward (and also don’t tell us what is here, which is the flip side the campaign needs to emphasize). And a myspace, which weirdly is run by an imaginary 22-year old male although the target audience of this campaign is ostensibly conference planners. Ok, maybe it’s a real 22-year old intern. Happily the campaign does boast some pretty awesome t-shirts.
So I’m not crazy about the campaign although I think it could grow legs with a little tweaking (I do love the t-shirts — full disclosure, they gave us coupons to get one free) only I’m confused about why they brought the bloggers along.
It makes sense for them to get us to blog the campaign because it’ll likely be controversial to the folks who love Columbus and are already pretty dang defensive what with the Aaron Sorkin types who dismiss us. Maybe those people won’t get the joke so good thing to bring on the bloggers, ply us with the goodness that is Jeni’s ice cream (seriously, that salty caramel? If you haven’t had it, you haven’t lived) and then set us loose in a sugar-infused haze to blog it.
But then what? The campaign doesn’t have a lot of social media around it. They haven’t really come up with many ways to let people grab it and run. Jennifer Laycock has given ‘em a ton of free ideas that could help things along a lot but there we all were, sitting with our twitter accounts and blogs and they didn’t really figure out a good way to use us.
We’re talking about the campaign but we’re not really a part of it. If they grab Jennifer Laycock’s list, they could bring us on board a little more. There’s a lot of central Ohio pride among Columbus bloggers and some of us walk around with our cameras around our necks all the time (Kristen!) and our iPods ready to twitter (umm, me) and a bunch of us have tons of readers NOT in Columbus. You know, that target market of people not here who maybe want to come here. People like Kristen (just check out her gorgeous ComFest pictures), who genuinely love and celebrate Columbus can do a lot to change people’s mindset about it. Rather than invite her to a campaign about NOT in Columbus, I’d invite her to one to give her insider view about what IS Columbus. And then ask her to share.
In short (ha!) lots of bloggers already are changing people’s point of view about what’s here — use us for good instead of snark.
That’s right-use me for the good of cow town-not the snark!! And they should use me-because as you know-I am in the know! NO?
Yes, you ARE in the know! And you love it here! And what I’d do if I were an intrepid marketer is hire some bloggers like you and have you popular a Columbus fan blog and/or your own blog by giving you some free passes to our favorite stuff.
They could totally use Kristen for tons of good, not evil. And she would even accept money from them so they could feel good about supporting the local economy!
But what if our good *is* our snark?
Oh the campaign is snarky enough that it doesn’t need our encouragement!
On one hand, at least they’re trying. On the other hand, I’m a bit cynical about whether it’ll work. Don’t get me wrong, I’m Columbus born and bred and I love the place, but Ohio has been the “boring” place that people get sent off to from more exciting places like California or New York for so long that I think we’re never really going to achieve the level of “cool” that Experience Columbus would like. Which I think is ok- we can be all in on the secret and smile when people call our little hometown boring, because we know better.
Kim, problem is if they keep it a secret than we lose all those tourism dollars and conference dollars. So their challenge is how to confront that boring image and make people think differently. I’m not sure if this campaign will do it but I like their willingness to try something new. I just don’t know if people outside of Columbus will really get it without more of a push TOWARDS Columbus. Right now it’s a knowing, in-on-the-joke nod towards their prejudices but it doesn’t do a lot to upend those prejudices.
Nice write up!
You know, I had a friend who has lived in NYC, Connecticut, LA and San Diego visit earlier this summer.
He spent a week here, just hanging out with us, seeing some sites and meeting some people.
He was floored. Loved it. Is now planning on leaving San Diego behind and moving here this fall. He’s self employed and can live wherever he wants and he WANTS to live in Columbus.
The phrase we kept hearing from him during the week? “I would never know I was in Columbus.” A great way of summing up the “surprise” at finding out just how cool our fair city is.
It’s no LA, Vegas or New York, but it’s a darn fine city.
I love the edge they were playing off of for this campaign, but they completely missed the boat on implementation. Social Media is sort of the brave new work of marketing and I think it’s awesome they’re trying…I just hope they’re trying hard to enough to realize part of social media is listening to the feedback from outlets like this and then adjusting their approach.
Jennifer, I wonder — are they going to tweak it? The new campaign on the ExperienceColumbus.com site makes me wonder if they were using “feedback” as an excuse to garner buzz from the blogosphere. Which has worked ‘cuz most everyone there has written about it and linked ‘em all up.
Dawn,
I can’t imagine that they won’t tweak it at least a bit. Clearly they won’t throw the campaign out, but I don’t think any of us are saying they should.
If they’d revamp those videos to add the positive spin, that’d be a big improvement.
Frankly, I’d like to see them chuck that web site completely, but there are changes that could be made to it that would help as well.
Then I think it’s all in how they approach and grow it long term.
But if their “plan” was simply to have us all blog about it and *poof* everything is peachy, then I think they’re going to get a sobering lesson in social media.
Dawn, thanks for coming to the event - it was so nice to finally meet you in person. Glad you’re talking to Jennifer, we should all do lunch soon and talk about bringing Blogher here!
I definitely believe the Experience Columbus folks will be listening and taking in all this great feedback. No one expected everyone to love the campaign, we truly wanted to get input and feedback. We’ve gotten tons - and it’s great stuff. Thanks for being part of it. I can’t wait to see where things go next.
I have been telling my husband for years that I want to move to Columbus. It’s where the cool kids live.
What we don’t have. How about a downtown? There are some cool little restaurants on side streets, but try to get something to eat that’s affordable after 3 PM in the afternoon. And, let’s not even talk about weekends. Or the lack of decent public transportation.
I’ve lived in Columbus since 1979 and I’m neutral on it. I think it’s better than it was when I moved here. Actually, I loved visiting Columbus when visited, but once I was here it was a snoozer. My film teacher at OSU, Drvota, loved Columbus. He came here via Prague and NYC and fell in love with the place. Go figure. I love big buildings and lots and lots of people on the street. I oughtta put up my pictures of the deserted City Center.
I have a lot of fond memories of Columbus since childhood, and I still enjoy visiting (I have family in the area). My mother used to say she’d retire to Columbus, but then she got too old to tolerate the cold (she says).
I’m a little jaded by the hoopla, though, because I live in another region that routinely gets mentioned in those Best-Of magazine rankings, and I’m not convinced it’s done the area any favors, really. One large city has horrible school district problems because the influx is stressing resources. Another couple of towns have had a high rate of (problematic) development, losing whatever small town flavor existed before. That’s just the tip of the ice berg. So outside attention can be double-edged.
On the other hand, I’m tickled that so many cool bloggers are in Columbus!
When I think of Columbus I still think of “Family Ties.” I’m such a Gen Xer, eh?
As you know, I’m in Chicago. I see my fair share of escaped Ohioans who just trash their home state. My current joke is that we need a wall to keep them all in Ohio. But I guess you can’t just judge a town on those who leave it, you gotta listen to those who stayed.
As one of those who left Columbus with no plans of ever returning even though she has family there, I’m moderately hopeful that this might work. So many things didn’t. And when I combined the Ameriflora excess with the poverty and lack of resources for so many people, along with the racism/sexism/homophobia I just couldn’t see what the city had for me. But, since I do have family there, I’d love to see the Wexner/Wexler/Schottenstein hold on the city lighten a bit so truly small and neighborhood focused businesses could thrive. What made the Short North work was its independence. If that energy could spread, I think it would do the city a lot of good. And even though I love Chicago too much to move back, I want Columbus to be a better place for my nieces and nephews than it was for me. I have hope. Thanks for posting about this, Dawn.
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