Michigan residents and visitors can now don Pure Michigan sweatshirts and other official logo merchandise launched by Travel Michigan. This would normally be a good thing, but in this case is just one more way for Michigan to prove how dysfunctional the state is.

Pure Michigan Merchandise

The award winning Pure Michigan campaign has been in the news all year for all the wrong reasons – budget cuts, politicians promising to restore the budget, and failure by the state legislature to pass the bill restoring the budget.

A budget cut approved earlier this month by the state legislature finally killed the campaign for this winter and the next summer by reducing the budget from $28 million to $5.4 million. A separate legislative attempt to secure $10 million to continue running the ads failed by a single vote.

With no hope now of getting the state funding restored this year, the ad campaign has been pulled and now Travel Michigan has to find funding from other sources – hence the merchandise.

George Zimmermann, vice president of Travel Michigan, said in a statement that “A portion of the sales will be earmarked to support the Pure Michigan advertising campaign. We know the sales income won’t solve our long-range funding challenge, but every dollar helps.”

Battle Creek, Michigan-based Turnkey Merchandise Programs (TMP) is running the merchandise program. The merchandise includes travel cups, golf balls, mugs and apparel – all made in Michigan or the US. It is available for purchase on www.puremichiganstore.org/.

The Pure Michigan campaign was launched in 2006 on radio with actor Tim Allen’s voice. Its budget was ramped up to $30 million and the campaign went national in 2009. Last year, the Pure Michigan campaign brought in 2 million visitors to Michigan. These visitors generated $600 million in travel related spending. Every dollar spent on the campaign converted into $2.23 in state tax revenue.

Forbes has listed Pure Michigan as one of the best ad travel ad campaigns ever. It has won Mercury awards every year since 2007, and actually won 4 Mercury awards this year – for best state tourism television commercial, best state tourism radio commercials, best state tourism co-op (partnership) program and best state tourism welcome center program.

Inspite of all the obvious benefits of funding this campaign, the Michigan legislature has been sitting on the fence all year long and now they’ve decided to pull the plug on it.

Selling t-shirts and mugs is hardly going to get them back on cable, but it may save some jobs and keep the brand alive until such time as the Michigan legislature sees the light and the funding is restored.