Millions Spent — What is the Rhode Island Brand?

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Monday, May 29, 2017

GoLocalProv Business Team

As Memorial Day weekend wraps up - and summer begins - Rhode Island has yet to relaunch a cohesive tourism marketing campaign. It has been more than a year since the disastrous launch of the new Rhode Island brand. Today, there is still no consistent logo, no tagline, no ad campaign, no new highway signage.

Driver’s licenses, licenses plates, state websites - you name it - nothing looks like anything else and it is hard to claim that any of it expresses Rhode Island. But in the past three years, Rhode Island taxpayers have invested more than $10 million in consulting fees and listening sessions -- all supposed to promote tourism.

And just last week, the "Special Legislative Commission to Study Methods for Growing Tourism" even announced that the state could "better support growth of its tourism industry if it reshuffles the state’s tourism oversight structure and promotion dollars to mirror its marketing goals."

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Tourism is Big Business in RI

According to Martha Sheridan, who heads the Providence Warwick Convention and Visitors Bureau (PWCVB), tourism is Rhode Island’s fourth largest industry. In Providence, there are a half dozen new hotels being built to meet the demands.

Despite the importance of the tourism economy, the state of Rhode Island continues to flounder. The opportunity is growing bigger for Rhode Island as Green Airport has secured direct international flights to Europe via Norwegian Air and direct flights to Denver and Orlando with Frontier.

These flights give Rhode Islanders the opportunity to have affordable travel closer than flying out of Boston, but equally important the enhanced service provides tourists the ability to come visit Rhode Island, but there is no clear message to attract the world’s travelers to Rhode Island. And while Discover Newport and PWCVB have been aggressive and consistent both in-state and out-of state-promoting their regions, Rhode Island will now miss the third consecutive tourism season without a comprehensive branded ad campaign.

In 2014, GoLocal talked to some top experts around nationally and locally - these discussion took place before the catastrophic “Cooler and Warmer” campaign that included a video produced by Havas that included a scene of Iceland.

“In order to be effective, a state brand needs to be authentic, while also differentiating and impactful on its target audience,” said Alex Braun, Senior Vice President at Penn Schoen Berland who has led messaging and brand positioning campaigns for the state of Iowa as well as Fortune 500 corporations including Microsoft, Ford, Comcast, and State Farm.

“Once you decide on a brand it is a serious decision and you have to stick to it, because if you try to change it midway through the process you send out very confusing signal,” said Braun.

“When we work on corporate branding campaigns we try to get to the soul of what the corporation is, and use that to develop a personality for the brand. I imagine it would be similar with a state. Vermont has done a great job at this. When you think of Vermont you have a clear idea of what Vermont is you think maple syrup and skiing and cows and farms. Rhode island can’t really say that they have done a very good job at articulating this yet," said Brian Gross of Nail.

More Vendors

Nail, the Providence-based advertising agency that was hired in February by Commerce, was joined by three other vendors chosen to undertake developing the new tourism and business attraction campaign with a budget totaling $4.3 million for a 12-month period starting March 1.

The announcement marked the latest major development for the state since the botched rollout of the state's original $5 tourism campaign in March 2016, after tapping two out of three out-of-state firms in the fall of 2015 to brand and promote Rhode Island.

"The botched rollout had nothing to do with us. To be clear, the working media side of our budget outperformed any aspiration they had of putting Rhode Island on the map in either tourism, or especially business development over time," said Marian Salzman of Havas PR, the only firm retained from the last effort, but this time only for business attraction - for a $691,000 contract.

Beyond Nail and the retention of Havas, Commerce selected Providence-based firm RDW Group, who is getting $1.7 million for strategic planning and paid media buying, and NJF, a MMGY Global company headquartered in New York City with satellite offices in Boston, was awarded the public relations portion of the tourism campaign for $473,000.