Houston. It's Worth It (cont'd)
The unorthodox Houston. It's Worth It campaign continues to pay dividends.
That campaign, as readers are surely aware, turns traditional marketing on its ear by conceding Houston's various shortcomings up front -- and then giving Houstonians a chance to point out all the reasons we love this crazy city.
Apparently, it convinced Christopher Solomon, the "frugal traveler" for the New York Times, to give Houston a second look.
Here's an excerpt:
For years, snarky dismissal - "A few days in Houston isn't a getaway; it's a sentence" - has pretty much been my response to any mention of the nation's fourth-largest city. Never mind that I'd never seen the place save once, as a blur framed by a rental car's windows as I headed elsewhere, fast.
But this fall, a curious newspaper article caught my attention. David Thompson and Randy Twaddle, partners in a Houston marketing firm called Ttweak, had started an unofficial campaign to boost their city's image by laughing at the realities of this city on the swamp. The Web site tumbles through 20 of the things that make Houston, uh, memorable - "The cockroaches; the flooding; the no mountains." - before finally arriving at the thumbs-up message: "Houston. It's Worth It."After the campaign's first few months, Houstonians and former residents had posted more than 1,200 comments on the Web site, www.houstonitsworthit.com. There were the comics: "The cleanest jail cells of any major metropolitan area." (Reason No. 539.) There were also, however, bayou poets: "If Houston were a dog, she'd be a mutt with three legs, one bad eye, fleas the size of corn nuts and buck teeth. Despite all that, she'd be the best dog you'll ever know." (No. 297.) In between, many people sang paeans to favorite haunts. Taken together, these comments formed an accidental guidebook to the Houston beyond the stereotype. A city that could snort at its shortcomings and still throw sweaty arms around its humid, traffic-choked, sprawling self couldn't be without redemption, could it?
The entire story is here. A certain favorite icehouse gets a nice mention, and is featured in the photo at the top of the story.
This is the kind of positive publicity that Jordy Tollett hasn't been able to achieve despite spending millions of dollars over a number of years. Since he can't even be bothered to take reporters' phone calls, maybe it's time to outsource Tollett's job to the folks over at ttweak.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 12/12/04 01:06 PM | Print |
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