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NYC & Co., the City’s marketing and tourism agency, has unveiled a new website and online campaign aimed at attracting international visitors to Gotham. The campaign was created by BBH, a highly-decorated and -celebrated British agency. Skipping the immediate ironies, let’s take a look at what’s happening here.

The new campaign features New York as this playful, colourful, cartoony wonderland of fun and games — like a themepark caricature of itself. From the video on the official visit NYC site, we can see the shiny, happy people making tracks around the five boroughs with the help of Reading Rainbow-style cartoon bits popping out where we’d least expect them.

This is New York, 2007

Reading Rainbow theme, circa 1987

Back to the topic at hand: New York. Is this what our city is perceived to be? Has the world capital of finance, business, fashion, arts, and music lost its gusto and become so child-like and malleable? I say no. As a New Yorker, I understand that this City has a certain understated charm. Our aesthetic is sterile and subdued — deco skyscrapers and right-angle intersections are our trade marks. Some of our most beautiful relics are not 8th century churches, as you might find in Europe, but rather bridges and parks and other less intricate objects. Being cool in New York means not talking about it, having fun means not making too big a fuss. If you ask me, slicing up Yankee stadium with a giant pizza cutter qualifies as making a big deal.

Or perhaps one giant acid trip.

Yes, New York goes overboard. Compared to every other American city, New York is bigger, taller, more dense, more crowded, wealthier, more expansive, more expensive, more stimulating, more depressing, more exciting, more terrifying and more stylish than our nearest competitor. What we are not, is more playful, more childish, softer and friendlier. An exerpt from the AdAge article sums it up quite nicely:

But at least in New York, the ads may get a skeptical reaction, because they trade what the city is really about — things like rich ethnic enclaves, impromptu street performers and that signature New York attitude — for “Yellow Submarine”-like animation.

Having just visited the Whitney museum, and having peeped some beautiful 20s and 30s deco-era urban-inspired works, I can’t help but snicker at this campaign. I dare say that it touches on the aesthetic of the London 2012 logo and animation. And we all have an opinion about that.

I can’t say at this point if BBH have missed the mark or not — this campaign may prove highly successful in attracting European tourists. But I suspect that if they do arrive on Gotham shores with these expectations in mind, they will be sorely disappointed and in for a bit of a rude awakening. I will, however, give props for the Ella Fitzgerald version of a Duke Ellington tune used as a soundtrack for the advert. If there is one music style that epitomises NYC, it’s some good ol’ swinging jazz.

Here’s an ad from a few years back for Tropicana. When it aired in Britain, I wondered how successful it would be to sell a Florida-based juice company by attaching it to New York. True, New York has major cachet in London, but cmon, that’s like saying the reason we eat apple pie is because is because it comes in a shiny tin.

Tropicana ad – soundtrack by Peggy Lee and Bing Crosby?

I could talk about this all day, but I’d rather here your opinions. Check out the official Visit NYC site and make sure you comment on this one.

Learned about this from BrandCurve and the article from AdAge.

// a tale of Britain, New York, brands & branding, national identities
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