What industry has the best advertising? It's a tough question. Beer commercials can be funny. The automobile industry comes up with some clever advertising and also has some stunningly beautiful brochures and websites. With the exception of Apple, technology companies don't produce much memorable advertising.
What about tourism? You probably knew I was going to get to that eventually. There is some really great advertising in the tourism industry. The Pure Michigan campaign featuring the voice of Tim Allen comes to mind. In all modesty, I think our team here at Inprint has produced some excellent work for our tourism clients. Sadly, there is also a lot of material out there that is not so good. My question is: why isn’t tourism advertising the most consistently innovative, beautiful, evocative and memorable advertising anywhere? I mean, every state, region or community has a unique story to tell and surely every place has something photogenic to feature. And since so many people love to travel, it's an audience just waiting to be inspired to go somewhere new. Why, then, do I continue to see pathetic travel marketing materials, including print ads, websites and visitor guides, that use comic sans as the font, dreary photography that looks like it came from the '70s, and headlines and body copy that say absolutely nothing interesting?
Travel is a noble pursuit. And tourism can have an uplifting economic impact on communities. I breaks my heart to see unworthy, ineffective marketing that is not generating results. We’re working on cleaning up this situation. One DMO at a time.
