What are you supposed to do when Forbes ranks your city as the most miserable in America? Rally city supporters and create a tongue-in-cheek marketing campaign.
That’s what Positively Cleveland, the Ohio city’s convention and visitors bureau, has done after Forbes proclaimed the city as the country’s most miserable last Thursday. Tami Brown, Positively Cleveland’s vice president of marketing, says the day the article came out, the bureau commissioned a local improv troupe to put together a video poking holes in the miserable title. In the video, actors gripe that there are too many sports and live entertainment options in town, and that commutes are so short they don’t have time to do their make-up in the car. There’s also a funny bit where upon hearing that Cleveland has been called the most miserable city, a group of Cleveland people jump up and cheer – which of course, doesn’t make them seem all that miserable.
As I argued in my Kanye West post a while back, thanks in large part to the Internet marketing communications has changed from a brute force approach of bombarding people with a predisposed message until it sticks to something more dynamic where you adapt to what’s “out there” in terms of what’s your brand’s place in culture. To use an analogy, it’s branding by aikido, not by karate. I think you can see the change in thinking in Clevaland’s case as well. Instead of trying to “fight” their new infamous title, they decided to engage it head on, by embracing it and then giving it a meaning makeover.
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