City’s Virtues to Be Sold in New Global Ad Campaign

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled the city’s first global advertising campaign yesterday in Times Square. The campaign, which carries the theme “This is New York City,” includes a television ad that will be the first to promote the city to potential visitors who live overseas. It is the latest weapon aimed at hitting the mayor’s target of increasing the number of visitors to 50 million a year by 2015. Last year, the city drew 43.8 million visitors, more than in any previous year, according to NYC & Company, the city’s tourism promotion agency.

To reach that goal, NYC & Company plans to place billboards in cities across America and Europe and to broadcast its new commercial in Britain, Ireland and Spain, on local TV stations in Philadelphia and Boston, and on the History Channel. The city’s contract with Cemusa, a provider of bus shelters and other structures, gives it hundreds of billboards that it can swap for advertising space on the streets of several European cities. Much of the money for the campaign is coming from the city budget.

Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday that it was time to recognize how important tourism is to the city’s economy and to try to increase it at a time when a weak dollar is making the city more affordable to foreigners.“People are shocked to find that what they thought was a very expensive city isn’t all that expensive,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

He said the officials decided that in order “to get at New York’s core, you simply have to let New York speak for itself.” So the theme of the ads is simply “This is New York City,” and the ads combine images of the city like the Statue of Liberty, Yankee Stadium and the Brooklyn Bridge with animated symbols meant to spark a viewer’s imagination.“This is targeted to the excitement of New York City,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “It’s a lot more upbeat than just ‘I Love New York.’” Their main goal was for advertising to do something and I think this is a great way to step up. Also, I think that unconventional ways to advertise such as, billboards is very successful in getting consumer's attention.

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