NY Media Exec Offered Chief Marketing Job at Commerce Corp
GoLocalProv Business Team
NY Media Exec Offered Chief Marketing Job at Commerce Corp
If she accepts the position, Salamano assumes a highly scrutinized post that was previously held by Betsy Wall. Wall was dismissed in April after a chaotic tourism launch that became a national embarrassment for Rhode Island. She only served for three months.
Tourism in Flux
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAfter Wall left the agency, public relations company Havas saw their contract trimmed back and they have received notice of termination. although the firm is still able to negotiate a renewal.
The Rhode Island House of Representatives' Finance Committee just put forth a budget that trims the statewide tourism effort given the ill-fated roll-out this past spring, giving more money back to the local tourism agencies for the next fiscal year. This comes at the expense of the statewide effort while they work to redeem and renew their effort.
Presently, Salamano serves as Vice President, Partner Marketing for Pop | CBS/Lionsgate Partnership. The company, Pop, is a joint venture of CBS Corporation and Lionsgate “The partnership combines CBS’s programming, production, and marketing assets with Lionsgate’s resources in motion pictures, television, and digitally delivered content.”
She has served in the position for three years.
According to multiple sources, Salamano has no tourism experience and members of the local tourism regions have voiced concerns about the void in relevant experience.
Previous to Pop, Salamano worked at The Promotional Edge, a marketing firm for the entertainment industry, and had stints at Viacom,MTV Networks, and Nickelodeon.
She is from Rhode Island and grew up in Warwick.
National Press Critique RI's Embarrassing Tourism Campaign - 2016
New York Times
A world-renowned designer was hired. Market research was conducted. A $5 million marketing campaign was set. What could go wrong?
Everything, it turns out.
The slogan that emerged — “Rhode Island: Cooler and Warmer” — left people confused and spawned lampoons along the lines of “Dumb and Dumber.” A video accompanying the marketing campaign, meant to show all the fun things to do in the state, included a scene shot not in Rhode Island but in Iceland. The website featured restaurants in Massachusetts.
Boston Globe
After the slogan’s unveiling, the blunders just kept coming. A promotional video to accompany the campaign included a shot of a skateboarder in front of a distinctive building that turned out to be the famous Harpa concert hall, located almost 2,500 miles away, in Iceland.
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.
City Lab
“Cooler & Warmer.” It took me roughly 30 minutes of reading about Rhode Island’s new tourism catchphrase to realize that “cool” is a double entendre—as in, the occasional temperature of the Ocean State, but also “hip and awesome.” And I still didn’t quite get it? This was not a good sign. I may be dense, but lordy, was I not alone.
Time
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.
IndieWhip, the company that edited the video, and the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation, which hired the firm, have apologized for the error. “The footage in question is of a Rhode Island skateboarder, filmed by a Rhode Islander,” IndieWhip added in a statement.
Forbes
A Big Price Tag Puts a Target on Your Back. Rhode Island spent a reported $550,000 to develop the “Cooler & Warmer” campaign. Development costs for the Florida and Washington campaigns cost $380,000 and $422,000, respectively. That’s before the first piece of media was ever purchased.
My advertising agency brethren will argue you have to invest money at the start of the campaign to “get it right.” But from my perspective, the above numbers seem exorbitant for a program built on public dollars. And in each case, an angry electorate agreed.
Creating a great “place marketing” campaign is a difficult job. Don’t make it more difficult by ignoring the lessons from states like Rhode Island, Florida and Washington.
