Clocking in with 45 brands, the new #1 movie at the box office, the seasonal romcom New Year's Eve, is bloated with as much product placement and brand name-dropping as it is marquee names. That count is high, yet still 15 brands fewer than the film's precursor, Valentine's Day.

A lot of the product placed in New Year's Eve is subject to a particular paradox: To have disclosed it would have been dishonest to reality.

Taking place around New York City's iconic Times Square New Year's Eve ball drop, the film includes numerous shots of the landmark square and its cluttered signage, as well as plenty o' stock footage of the actual event. In fact, the movie functions as a sort of tourism video produced by the city's tourism board. (Testifying to just how sanctioned it is as a tourism film, Mayor Mike Bloomberg even makes a cameo.)Continue reading...

It's a border battle fit for the season. And with this new Michigan-Wisconsin dispute comes all the underlying tensions from a long and tenuous adjacency that include zebra mussels, Asian carp, rights to the Upper Peninsula, Packers-Lions, Badgers-Spartans, the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, beach envy, Lake Michigan mineral rights, and which state really has the fattest people.

Yes, Wisconsin's tourism department has appropriated mitten imagery for new web-based winter promotion of its mitten-shaped state. And that has made mavens of mitten-shaped Michigan — well, mightily miffed. The result is a frosty contretemps between pillars of the Upper Midwest that is only likely to get more icy.

You see, Michiganders clearly own the historical and traditional use of their right hands — with fingers straight up and together, they form a perfect mitten shape —when pointing out, usually with their left index fingers, where something is located in the state's Lower Peninsula.Continue reading...

What do you think of when you think of Nevada? Most tourists would answer, "Las Vegas." That's a perception Nevada would like to change.

At the Governor's Conference on Tourism on November 29 (held in Las Vegas, of course), plans for a new branding campaign for the state of Nevada were announced. While state officials were careful not to downplay the value of Las Vegas as a drawing card, they say they want tourists to understand that there's a lot more to Nevada than the glittery lights, extravagant shows, and gambling casinos of "sin city." 

Even the Las Vegas Mayor, Carolyn Goodman, admitted, "We really need to step it up a bit. While we are well known throughout the world, everybody knows we're the entertainment capital of the world and that's us, we need to do more." Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki added, "We are going to transition from what we have and what you can see, to really what you can feel and what you can do."Continue reading...

"Brand USA has arrived, and it is not just a tourism brand,” stated Stephen J. Cloobeck, chairman of Brand USA, at a public unveiling today in London. 

Formerly known as the Corporation for Travel Promotion, Brand USA is the new name for America's tourism body encompassing all 50 states, part of a new national image campaign that has been in the works since last year, when Congress approved the public-private partnership to refresh America's brand with a global campaign pitching the U.S. as a destination to tourists.

As America's national brand, what is Brand USA exactly?Continue reading...

The state of New Mexico turns 100 in January but most Americans — or non-Americans, for that matter — apparently still don’t know or understand its charms just yet. When focus group members were asked to describe the state, words and phrases like “snooze,” “close to Arizona,” and “dull” came up. 

That’s not a good feeling for state tourism execs (or locals), so tourism officials are preparing to embark on a rebrand that has them thinking more about how to lure more visitors into the state rather than how to service the ones that are already there, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican.

Despite gorgeous scenery, draws such as Santa Fe and Taos, and a rich cultural heritage to draw on, "We suffer from low awareness and damaging misperceptions," State Tourism Secretary Monique Jacobson told attendees at a conference held by the New Mexico tourism association.Continue reading...

Brands including Microsoft, Land Rover, BlackBerry, and Toshiba have paid big bucks to be the sponsors of the Rugby World Cup, which is currently underway in New Zealand. The country and organization made a very big deal this summer about how they are going to do everything possible to curtail any little inkling of ambush marketing in order to protect the corporations that were shelling out to be officially part of the fun.

Now the RWC is getting its first test and it’s not from any corporate giant that has creatively found a way to sneak its logo into RWC matches. It’s from a strip bar.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that one such establishment in Wellington, NZ, sent out “scantily clad women in stilettos and ‘All Blacks’ uniforms emblazoned with silver ferns” to hand out two-for-one flyers to match attendees in the wake of the first match the town hosted during the event: South Africa v. Wales on Sept. 11.Continue reading...

Taiwan, remember that place? Wildly significant both economically and politically through the last half of the 20th century, the island nation that maybe kind of isn't a nation at all has been feeling a pinch in significance as the People's Republic next door continues to grow in importance.

So while recent reports about Taiwan's economic future vary (manufacturing drops and global talent flees but investment pours in), the island's tourism bureau is taking measures to sell interest in the destination via a new tourism campaign, "My Beautiful Island."

It was only a few months ago that Taiwan launched a new tourism campaign with the tagline, "Taiwan: The Heart of Asia." Now, its new tourism campaign insists, it's "Time for Taiwan."Continue reading...

Every high-level marketing plan goes through some focus-group action before seeing the light of day, with groups of 10 or 15 people gathering in conference rooms to kibbitz and quibble over where images should go and how this or that color makes them feel and exactly how a particular adjective reminds them of a certain Laverne and Shirley episode while executives try to read their minds from behind a two-way mirror.

The Telluride Ski Resort in Colorado is taking the focus group process to a whole new level, where there will be so many impassioned, opinionated voices, the quibbling will be drowned out and the data will make the quality choices stand out. At least, that’s what the resort hopes will happen.

The resort is surveying any interested consumers online about its planned 2011-12 marketing campaign, asking them to critique and choose between four possibilities.Continue reading...