Don't you dare say, "New Jersey," "Delaware," or "Maryland." Those are my three favorites and they offer all that a tourist could want, except if you want a desert or a huge canyon or Ohio.
Nebraska has an image problem. For four consecutive years, it’s come in dead last on a list of states that tourists are interested in visiting, and those Cornhuskers are not about to take that lying down in a cornfield!
I've never been to Nebraska, but when I think of the beautiful love ballads ("Moonlight Over Omaha" and "I Love Kearney In The Summer" among them) that you hear people singing about the place, and I get the itch to see what's going on out there. And remember, The Simpsons version of Hannah Montana was Alaska Nebraska!Well, as I say, they aren't going to take that "last" ranking without fighting back. So they all got together and came up with a new slogan to get people off their beehives and into Box Butte, and that slogan follows:
Nebraska: It's Not For Everyone!
Well. The Nebraska Tourism Commission comes right out and says that Nebraska “may not be on everyone’s bucket list of places to visit.” But! “If you like experiences that are unpretentious and uncomplicated or if you enjoy escaping the big city life for moments of solitude in the open plains, creating your own fun or exploring the quirkiness the state has to offer, chances are, you will like it here.”
Ever wonder why some television commercials are so effective, and have you running down to the Fiat showroom minutes after seeing an ad during "The Big Bang Theory"? It's not so much what they say as what they don't say! And you won't see a commercial written by a slick New Yorker that goes on and on and on and concludes with, "chances are, you'll like it."
The soft sell only works for very few clients.
McDonalds didn't get to be on top of the fast food world by saying, "Hey! If Burger King is closed, you might think about stopping here at the Golden Arches, if it's convenient." And Budweiser would never have been crowned "King of Beers" had their slogan been something like, "There are a lot of beers and ours is one of them."
The new motto is not exactly driving Nebraskans into a frenzy of approval, either. The Omaha World-Herald newspaper took a poll, and it turns out that a majority of readers like the slogan, but others say it doesn’t help sell the state as a place as a cool tourist destination.
Nebraska native Micah Yost told the paper he just doesn’t think "the best way to pitch ourselves is calling out stereotypes about ourselves. There’s no reason why that would draw people to the state.”
The campaign cost the state (taxpayers) $450,000, which did not include the cost of coffee and Danish at the rollout meeting....money paid to a marketing firm in Colorado, because there just can't be any good marketing firms in Nebraska, for crying out loud!
As always, Twitter had the last words:
“Nebraska: Typhoid Free since ‘87!” tweeted Brett Baker, a producer at 1011 News in Lincoln. And he also submitted: “Nebraska: Minimal storm surge!” and “Nebraska: We have very few serial killers!”
See you there sometime soon?
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