You may have seen them too. New York posters at bus shelters, or on billboards. With the Empire State Building in the foreground and calling out to you by saying “You too are missing in New York City!” A tourist campaign in the midst of a pandemic, while the borders are closed. Funny idea.
On the one hand, we must admit that it is ingenious: it is certainly one of the only tourist advertising campaigns displayed at the moment. Given the context, it is more easily noticed. The Big Apple must be aware that this will not push the French to prepare an immediate journey. So the New York tourist office immediately admitted: it simply agreements with an urban display, JC Decaux, and it must regularly occupy the advertising space that it has been granted. And not only in France: this campaign has been deployed in cities around the world.
The French, an essential audience for New York
AT London, these are digital billboards, in France, 7,520 posters bus shelters from the end of December until April. Usually, the New York tourist office takes advantage of these spaces for partnerships with tour operators, or other tourism players.
More in pandemic, he thought about the best message he could send – and concluded that it was necessary at all costs to maintain the link, the relationship between the city and its tourists. You should know that New York is the city most visited by foreigners: 30% of tourists who come to United States come here. And they are the ones who represent 50% of spending in the city. So you can imagine the disastrous impact of the pandemic and the border closures here.
And French tourists are not left out. Proximity, and especially the fact that the French are particularly focused on cultural tourism, makes us an essential audience! The communications chief of the tourist office revealed that his very last trip, before it was impossible to travel, was to Paris, to unveil an exhibition at the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Philadelphia. An exhibition which has now been postponed. Museums, theaters, Broadway musicals attract a lot of French people.
A campaign with political overtones?
New York also thinks the French are looking for experiences more authentic than other tourists, and he likes it, because the city and its 5 neighborhoods are very diverse and meet this demand – between gospel in Harlem and graffiti artists or designers in Brooklyn, there is plenty to see.
We also see the Empire State Building on these advertising posters. The tourist office has developed its campaign itself, and it is convinced that after the pandemic, when travel resumes, tourists will want to go back to basics first. Visit the most famous places. Hence the choice already to put an iconic monument in the foreground.
They could have put the Statue of Liberty squarely! But when the campaign started, we knew that Joe Biden was going to be the next president. That the image of the United States in the world was going to be restored only through the election, and the decisions that this new administration would take.
Whereas before, hear under the administration Trump, New York perhaps wanted, needed to reaffirm in these campaigns that it was welcoming to tourists, that it was a city adept at diversity. And for that, the best symbol was the Statue of Liberty. As there is no longer so much need to reaffirm this message, it is therefore the Empire State Building that you see in Paris, Bordeaux, Niort or even Cholet!
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