RI Tourism’s Havas Hires Top Lobbyist as Consultant
GoLocalProv News Team and Kate Nagle
RI Tourism’s Havas Hires Top Lobbyist as Consultant
“As things started getting weirder, and things didn’t jive with what I thought should have gone on, I realized I needed a ‘translator’ - someone who could explain things and provide assistance,” said Havas PR North America CEO Marian Salzman. “[Lopes] is not lobbying for Havas. I refer to him as my ‘MapQuest,’ to help me wade through things here in the state.”
Havas was chosen by Rhode Island in October to execute the new tourism campaign's public relations and marketing — and is slated to get $3.5 million of the state’s now beleaguered $4.5 million effort.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTSalzman told GoLocal that her decision to bring Lopes on came just before the recent General Assembly hearings on the tourism fallout, and that the money expended to retain Lopes’ services is out of her Havas CEO budget — and not any money from the State of Rhode Island.
“Up until now, we haven’t testified, and of course he won’t testify,” said Salzman. “Since the fallout, I’ve been here in Rhode Island twenty-one days. We just needed independent advice.” Salzman and Lopes declined to comment on the fee structure of the arrangement.
Looking Back
When the firms for the much-anticipated Rhode Island tourism campaign were chosen last fall, the state announced it was hiring Havas for PR, Milton Glaser for design, and Rhode Island design firm Epic Decade to focus on storytelling.
Two months later in December, the state brought on now former-Chief Marketing Officer Betsy Wall — who resigned under pressure in April after a series of errors at the campaign’s launch, including out-of-state footage in the video and hundreds of mistakes on the campaign’s website. It was revealed this week that Wall is getting a close to $70,000 severance package.
“I used to believe in ‘arranged marriages," in that you’ll either fall in love or fall in hate,” said Salzman, of the analogy of making the separate entities work together on the campaign. “But I am no longer sure that arranged marriages make a lot of sense. I had no issues with the people with whom we were arranged, just the process. I was very worried about there being no lead agency.”
“Yes, we did give money back,” said Salzman, who noted it was tied to a leadership decision. “When [Wall] came here, she wanted to do more paid media, so I voluntarily gave it back. I said you believe in paid media, and I support that.”
Salzman then spoke to the value of the earned PR, which is what she was hired to do.
“Last month in pure editorial coverage, using AVEs, we got $467,000 in value for the month of April," said Salzman of the industry metric known as "advertising value equivalency."
Looking Ahead
Salzman said she isn’t sure of the need for a whole “start-over,” after the “cooler-warmer” brand identity was dropped from the logo design undertaken by Milton Glaser.
“I don’t think it’s a start over. I think 'making it your own' is resonating,” said Salzman. “The people have had the chance to opine.”
Salzman said that the contract Havas has with the state “may or may not be renewed” at the end of the year.
“I would not renew at the same level,” said Salzman. “[The state] needs things I am not able to buy.”
When asked what she learned from the process, Salzman offered the following.
“Thank God I have someone who’s running the office who’s so detail oriented,” said Salzman. “And thank God I made the decision not to farm the business, but to be a local shop here with New York and Boston opining. But I don’t know if you can do great work for a public entity. The best work is when you take risks. How do you take risks in a public environment?”
“Is Rhode Island dysfunctional? We all come from dysfunctional families,” said Salzman. “We’re big people, and we need to suck it up.”
“People here love Rhode Island. That’s the reason why I’d stay in — and I’ve never dealt with these kind of bruises,” said Salzman. “The fact is, this is an awesome place, I would never fault the people or place. What happened was a convergence of bad choices, good people in wrong place at wrong time.”
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.
