Posted on 12/02/2003 5:47:24 PM PST by bicycle thug
PORTLAND - It worked for Nike.
The advertising company that invented the phrase ``Just Do It'' for the shoe giant has coined a new tagline to sell Oregon's tourist and business potential in other parts of the country.
On Monday Gov. Ted Kulongoski unveiled the new slogan: ``Oregon. We Love Dreamers.''
The slogan - which replaces the old ``things look different here'' catch phrase - was devised by Wieden+Kennedy, the Portland advertising firm that created Nike's most famous slogan.
The ``dreamers'' slogan and a series of sample ads, presented at an Oregon business summit Monday in Portland, are designed for a wide variety of purposes, including tourism, business recruitment and state-product marketing.
Dan Wieden, one of the ad firm's founders, said the campaign is built around the ``basic sense of idealism'' that defines the Oregon culture. As a result, the advertising extols Oregon innovations such as publicly owned beaches as well as the notion that you can find a man in a suit and a man in dreadlocks side-by-side on a bus, chatting pleasantly.
The drive to intensify the state's marketing efforts followed lots of bad press about Oregon, a state with a slumping economy, the nation's highest unemployment rate, and schools and public services that were once held up as models now ridiculed as failures because of budget cuts.
Debby Kennedy, marketing director for the Port of Portland, is heading the ``Brand Oregon'' project out of the governor's office, and she said few, if any, states are trying to develop a marketing plan that is as far-reaching.
The idea, she said, is to create a buzz about Oregon by developing a consistent theme across a wide variety of advertising.
Some money for the advertising campaign will come from a new tourism tax on lodging, and Kennedy said several Oregon companies also have agreed to contribute financially. It is not yet certain how much money will be spent. The ads are expected to start appearing by spring.
Or Washington's lefties. (One can always hope.)
Sounds about right. Instead of fixing the problems socialism caused, just make up a new slogan and pretend the problems don't exist ;-)
Well, isn't that special?
Oregon now has a slogan devised by a Portland ad agency. I wonder how much they billed the citizens of Oregon for that trenchant aphorism. It would appear to be pretty much the polar opposite of North Carolina's motto, "Esse quam videri." Ours is courtesy of Cicero (who billed us nothing, to the best of my knowledge) rather than an ad agency, and it translates as "To be rather than to seem."
I'll stick with ours, thanks.
We are already California deluged by those folks, more moving here is a scary thought.
Here is a story about the Ken Kesey statue that panders to the theme and shows how coordinated this slogan is with the creation of new tourist attractions.
Fine print: Not intended toward any Oregon Freeper
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