RI Tourism Vendor Who Did Iceland Video Sued for Stealing
GoLocalProv News Team
RI Tourism Vendor Who Did Iceland Video Sued for Stealing
IndieWhip, the firm that brought you images of Iceland in the botched $5 million Rhode Island tourism campaign fallout, has been accused by a Boston-based company of "stealing their trade secrets and creating a rival business," as reported by David Harris for the Boston Business Journal.
"In a federal lawsuit filed in Boston on Monday, Project Repat said a production company it hired to help with online advertising, called IndieWhip, launched a competing firm called American Quilt a year after its contract was terminated. The lawsuit names the company along with IndieWhip founders Chandler R. Quintin, Paul M. Kettelle and Brian Bruzzi," wrote Harris.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTHarris reported that IndieWhip did not respond to request for comment. Read more here.
RI's IndieWhip Controversy, Boston Parallels
GoLocal reported of IndieWhip's role the botched campaign in March:
On Monday, the new state tourism logo was unveiled and it was met with harsh criticism by many Rhode Islanders via social media, but that adverse response may have been the highlight of the launch. By Tuesday afternoon a new video released by Commerce Corp was found to have a featured scene that was actually footage from Iceland. Clumsily, the video was deleted by Commerce from YouTube without any explanation where it had been posted.
IndieWhip, who initially apologized for the error, then decided to make fun of the situation, which saw Rhode Island tourism's head of marketing Betsy Wall fired for the embarrassing rollout.
Meanwhile, Boston Business Journal's Harris writes of IndieWhip's lawsuit.
According to the suit, IndieWhip allegedly attempted to mask their involvement in American Quilt by creating shell companies and using pseudonyms in American Quilt's online communications. One of those pseudonyms is "Joe McMillan," an unethical character on the AMC television series "Halt and Catch Fire" who steals intellectual property to unfairly compete with his former friends.
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.
