A little over a week ago, the Houston Business Journal ran an editorial by Doug Williams that attacked the unorthodox “Houston: It’s worth it” campaign masterminded by local advertising firm ttweak.
Williams, who is a principal at a local advertising firm that presumably competes with ttweak, writes that he’s not amused that people are laughing about Houston as a result of the ttweak campaign, and spills way too much ink on what he thinks should be done to boost Houston. *yawn* *SNORE*
So, we’ve now heard a typically unimaginative establishment advertising type complain about an advertising campaign that’s actually captured national attention. We’ve heard Jordy Tollett, the president of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, criticize the ads and then refuse to talk to national reporters. And we’ve heard Elyse Lanier, whose “Expect the Unexpected” campaign was a monumental flop, weigh in on the matter from her summer vacation spot in Malibu — Houston being too hot for the former mayoral first lady in the summertime.
I can sympathize with the establishment to some extent. In the case of Tollett and Lanier, the millions and millions they’ve spent seem to have had minimal impact. And Williams surely is a bit upset that a couple of upstarts with an office in Midtown/Montrose have the gumption to upstage his firm and garner national attention — and to do it without bilking the taxpayers out of millions of dollars.
Houston can’t be an easy city to market. As I’ve written elsewhere, I like the fact that ttweak takes on its drawbacks head on. While Houston is not a city that can be marketed in the same way as, say, San Antonio, it is a great city with plenty to offer. Playing on people’s negative images of Houston — and then showing them why it’s great despite those things — makes sense to me.
But then, I came here for grad school despite hearing all those negative things, and immediately began discovering all of those positives that FAR outweigh the negative.
I emailed the ttweak people for a reaction to the Williams piece, but they never responded. One suspects they were too busy promoting the city to respond to negative (maybe envious?) establishment types.
