"South Carolina is So Gay"

A state employee has resigned and officials have disavowed an international advertising campaign that led to calls for an investigation of tourism posters proclaiming “South Carolina is so gay.”

The campaign, which plastered the London subway with posters advertising the charms of South Carolina and five major U.S. cities to gay European tourists, landed with a resounding thud in South Carolina, where the issue of gay rights has long been a political flashpoint. >>Full Story

Thoughts// We've been scratching our heads on this one. Despite whatever you think of the creative, the tag line, or how this was allegedly only approved by "a low level staffer", this story nevertheless raises some interesting questions about the precarious nature of being a state tourism agency.

With gay travel estimated to be a $64.5 billion market by the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association, how does a state tourism agency legitimately—using public funds—communicate to this audience in a meaningful way?

Once a decision has been made to pursue the gay tourism market, how do you sustain and defend the decision?

Tell us what you think! We'd love to hear from you on this one.

Travel Trends - South Carolina, College Kids

Time to Thaw - The South Carolina Department of Tourism has recently launched a cold weather message campaign in the city of Chicago which drives consumers to the 'Time to Thaw' microsite. The microsite contains your standard info, a cute little 'thaw' button that melts some ice, a video, etc. Nothing groundbreaking or one-of-a-kind, but a solid campaign microsite none the less. Of course my favorite part of the site is the 'submit a Windsurfin' Wall Photo Contest' which features Chicagoans in a variety of funny poses. See Jeb above. Nice.
http://www.discoversouthcarolina.com/time-to-thaw/

College Kids Have Too Much Time On Their Hands - Or, at least I think so. eMarketer.com brings us this report from Youth Trends showing website usage from college level consumers.

Survey says:

The discrepancy between the top ten sites for Males and Females is no surprise, however the use of Wikipedia by guys may suggest quite a few term papers are being referenced from the popular wiki site.

As far as usage, the one stat that stands out to me is only 2% of users have uploaded their own videos. However, no surprise that virtual communities, i.e. Second Life, are low on the list.

Considering most of us over the age of 22 think that everyone younger than 22 are the ones populating such culturally rich sites like break.com (warning, stupid guy humor), it is a bit surprising to see that stat.

However, I think a lot of us who have run a consumer-generated video promotion have discovered that we are a society who would rather watch than work.
http://www.emarketer.com/

Quick Case Study: Email Appearance

For those of you sending emails...which I would imagine is most of you...make sure you take the time to test the appearance of your email messages in a variety of browsers and ISPs prior to sending the message.

For instance, take a look at the example I received today from South Carolina.

Here is what the email looked like when I viewed it in Outlook (via the Reading Pane option):


Not that appealing.

As you can see, Microsoft Outlook (which we all know is just trying to protect me from people like that guy in Africa with the $5 million dollars) has decided to block all of the images within the email. Which, in this case (due to the HTML coding) makes the email nearly impossible to decipher.

At this point, I think you can safely assume that most users reach for the delete key.

Here is how the email is suppose to look:


Ah, that is better. And a pretty good looking email, too.

Now, I should not pick on South Carolina too much for this mistake, because I know (like many of you as well) I am guilty of the same error.

However, with the amount of advertising clutter the average traveler wades through each day, you need to ensure that they can quickly recognize your message.