Error Riddled Tourism Campaign Consultant Wins National Award for RI Work
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
One of the consultants tied to the failed and error-riddled 2016 tourism campaign for Rhode Island - that featured a video that showed footage of Iceland, a website with hundreds of mistakes, and included the tagline “cooler and warmer” applied for and won a prominent public relations award for his work in Rhode Island.
Ravi Sunnak, a strategist for Havas, the public relations firm that oversaw the development of the Rhode Island video featuring Iceland, was selected as one of the top 40 Under 40 by PR Week - a national trade magazine - for "turning around" the state's tourism campaign, despite a slashed budget for the global PR firm and a stalled PR campaign for the state.
PR Week reported, “He also masterminded a huge reputation turnaround for Rhode Island after the state launched an unsuccessful brand campaign in spring 2016.”
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThe award also said he (and Epic Decade) helped “create a statewide program called Make It Yours, flooding social media with positive content about Rhode Island, changing not only the conversation about the state, but securing additional budgets for the account and ensuring the agency’s contract was renewed.”
RI's Track Record
In 2016, the Boston Globe wrote about Rhode Island’s Havas-led campaign, “The new website erroneously boasted that Little Rhody is home to 20 percent of the country’s historic landmarks. And officials needed to remove three names from its restaurant database, after realizing the information was so outdated that two of the restaurants aren’t open right now.”
Time magazine wrote about the tourism PR effort, "The Rhode Island Tourism Division had to pull its latest video shortly after it was posted online Tuesday because it contained footage shot in Iceland. The three-second scene in question shows a man doing a skateboard trick outside of the Harpa concert hall in Reykjavik, the country’s capital.”
As for the post-debacle "turnaround"?
Havas’ budget was slashed by Governor Gina Raimondo by $120,000 for failures of the campaign launch, its subcontractor was not paid for the video, and in 2017 the contract was split up and awarded to multiple agencies. Havas only retained a fraction of its 2016 contract.
In May of 2016, Havas’s Linda Descano told GoLocal in an email, “We voluntarily agreed to a reduction of fees of $150K in February -- that's when Betsy Wall had emphasized the paid media. Then there was a $120K reduction in March -- that was another one that was a collaborative conversation.”
Havas PR Week Award Pitch
When asked about the award, Steve Barrett, Editor of PR Week wrote, “Have you spoken to Havas? They gave us this information.”
Barrett refused to answer questions about the editorial review process by PR Week. He did deny that the award winners pay for inclusion or that awards are sponsored content.
Marian Salzman, who oversees the Rhode Island tourism account for Havas refused to answer questions about the success of the RI tourism campaign.
She did issue the following statement, “We're proud of the work Havas (in collaboration with RICC and an extended group of talented partners inside the state and beyond) did and are doing in service to the State of Rhode Island; it's a place we love. Ravi is a real team player, genuinely good guy, and role model who cares immensely about all his clients and the people he manages."
In an analysis of who received consulting contracts from RI Commerce, Havas received nearly as much in state funding than the value of all contracts awarded to Rhode Island companies.
Havas received payment in the past two years more than $4 million — $4,114,025.78 according to data provided to GoLocal from Commerce.
Havas has been paid nearly as much as all Rhode Island contracts combined during the past two years.
Of the 136 contracts let by Commerce, Rhode Island-based companies received just $4,482,234.48 of the $12,475,469.90 in the past two years.
Downsized Efforts
PR Week in its award cites Sunnak as securing "additional budgets" for the account, when in fact when RI Commerce issued new contracts in for consultants in 2017, Havas' contract was slashed to just $691,000 to pitch business-attraction efforts.
The remainder of Havas' work was assigned to other agencies. In February, RI Commerce awarded contracts to two Providence-based firms RDW Group getting $1.7 million for strategic planning and paid media buying, and NAIL Communications getting $1.4 million for both tourism and business attraction campaigns.
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.
Rhode Island Commerce Corporation refused to answer repeated specific questions regarding Havas winning an award for the RI tourism campaign.
