British Petroleum is paying $200,000 for a joint tourism ad campaign being run by three Gulf Coast states to spread the message that the beaches are oil-free and safe for visitors.

Alabama Gulf Coast beach ad

The media campaign is being run by Pensacola, Fla. based BPM Inc. on behalf of Alabama, Florida and Mississippi, with the total cost of the campaign expected to cross over a quarter million dollars.

The message the BP funded 60-second ad intends to convey is that Gulf Coast beaches are open for business, there is no oil and the fun is the same as before.

BP is not mentioned anywhere in the ads. Louisiana, the fourth state most impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, is handling its own ad campaign.

Bruce Johnson, director of governmental affairs for BP in Ohio, met with around 150 Mississippi Coast tourism officials on Tuesday.

He is quoted as saying that BP will spend $500,000 in tourism promotion to help counter the negative media stories and opinions about visiting the Gulf Coast while the giant oil slick looms offshore.

The Gulf Coast state tourism bureaus - after an initial period of panic where they themselves warned visitors about the dangers of beach vacations with an oil spill in progress  - have now latched on to this message about the beaches being open with no visible impact from the oil spill.

PR campaigns aside, the question of what will happen to tourism when the oil actually reaches the beaches was vividly demonstrated when tar balls started washing up on Alabama’s Dauphin Island a couple of days ago. 

The massive worldwide publicity quickly killed off the island’s beach tourism businesses and even put a damper on statewide tourism. Alabama didn’t waste any time and came out with a new video ad promoting Alabama’s Gulf Coast beaches and turned the screws on BP to spread the message.

Based on the harsh response from travelers to the Dauphin Island tar balls, it looks like if and when the oil slick and tar balls reach Florida, there will be large-scale cancellations, and the media campaign will have to be huge to stem the flow.

Keith Overton, chairman of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, told a US Senate Congressional hearing (CSPAN video) on Tuesday that Florida needs a $75 million media campaign to counter the damage to tourism from the oil spill. 

Is BP going to pay Florida $75 million to promote tourism? Not going to happen. The $500,000 they’re planning to spend across 4 states is too little for a sustained national or worldwide media campaign, and its going to take years for BP to reach a final settlement and shell out anything close to the $75m that Florida tourism needs.

Update 1: May 12, 2010 - Florida Governor Charlie Crist has asked BP to pay out $34.75 million for an emergency tourism campaign. VisitFlorida officials only have $2.5 million available right now, but they’re plowing ahead with a media buy and their spot is expected to be on television in a week or so. Meaning BP will either have to say yes or no inside one week.

Update 2: May 17, 2010 - BP CEO Tony Hayward came out of a meeting with Gov. Crist and announced that Florida would get $25 million for tourism promotion from BP. Hayward also announced that Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana would also get $15 million each for tourism promotion. That’s a total of $70 million that BP is pledging for Gulf Coast tourism.

Visit Florida, the official tourism marketing corporation for the state of Florida, has launched a new marketing campaign – Your Florida Side – that aims to portray the visual imagery of Florida as a side of your life which you can identify with, and go back to.

Your Florida Side

Florida also gets a new tourism slogan – “Your Florida Side is Calling.” The new $6.1 million campaign, created by DDB Miami, includes dozens of executions in various media featuring more than fifty still images, each encouraging consumers to “embrace,” “unleash,” “awaken,” and “release” their Florida side.

They’re specifically targeting recession-weary consumers who have previously visited Florida, putting the imagery in front of them, and telling them this is one side of you, so put that other side with all the worries behind you, and give in to your Florida side.

“We all have a Florida side,” says Susannah Costello, Brand Director for Visit Florida. “It’s the part of us that longs for sandy beaches, romantic sunsets, and time in the sun with people we care about.”

Will Seccombe, Chief Marketing Officer for Visit Florida, added that “The goal of this campaign is to unlock the power of the memories and experiences that are generated by nearly 100 million vacations taken in Florida each year. We know that 94 percent of our visitors have been to the state before and that Florida enjoys tremendous brand loyalty, so our job is to simply awaken the emotions from past visits to the Sunshine State.”

The slogan “Your Florida Side is Calling” isn’t as catchy as the iconic ones used by Vegas or Virginia, but the campaign’s premise and execution is, and it does manage to stand a cut above the rest and make you want to ‘Give in to your Florida side.’

Aside from the fact that one of the pictures, of a man sailing a boat in open waters, wasn’t taken in Florida waters, a job well done by DDB Miami.

More details and media here – www.visitflorida.com/your-florida-side

If it isn’t just like Michigan to take their biggest cash cow and screw it up so bad that it becomes a bankrupt national joke. No, we’re not talking about Detroit auto. This is about the destruction of Pure Michigan, the state’s hit tourism ad campaign, which is now getting more coverage for its funding problems than for its effectiveness.

Pure Michigan Billboard, Times Square

Background – Pure Michigan radio ads with actor Tim Allen’s voice were first aired in 2006, and went on national cable tv last year, thanks to a $30 million tourism promotion budget.

$10 million was spent on national cable ad buys in 2009, with 7,900 airings across 15 cable channels seen by 60 million people.

A study showed that each dollar spent by Michigan on out-of-state advertising generated more than $40 of spending at Michigan businesses and $2.86 in new state tax collections.

According to the latest figures from the Michigan Economic Development Corp., Michigan clocked around $18.1 billion in annual travel spending supporting 193,000 jobs and generating $874 million in state taxes. Forbes listed Pure Michigan as one of the 10 best travel ad campaigns of all time.

And now fast-forward to February 2010 – where Travel Michigan, the State of Michigan’s official agency for the promotion of tourism, is facing a deadline of a matter of days, if it wants to run Pure Michigan ads again on national cable TV this year. The only problem is that they don’t have any money because the state slashed its budget from $30m to $5.4m.

Late last year, after a lot of negative publicity over the axing of Pure Michigan’s national campaign, the state legislature decided to try and revive it by setting up a permanent funding mechanism for Travel Michigan, as a percentage of tourism tax revenue.

But they’re still waffling over the 3-bill package (HB 5018, HB 5088, and HB 5089) which would appropriate upto a maximum $40 million every year in funding for travel marketing from tourism taxes.

Without this new funding, Michigan would fall from 6th to 42nd in the list of state tourism budgets. The currently allocated $5.4m would ensure that Michigan would not be able to air on national cable, and would end up depending on in-state tourism.

This in a state with a 14.3% unemployment rate (projected to reach 15.8% in 2010) and a fiscal deficit of $1.6 billion, which ranks 4th amongst the states with highest foreclosure rates. Not to mention that GM and Chrysler went bankrupt and had to be bailed out.

If they get the new funding, Travel Michigan plans to increase the national ad buy from $10m to $12.5m, which would enable them to extend the ads all the way to September, and attract more out-of-state visitors. If they don’t get the funding, you can expect Michigan to fall off the tourism map.

To see the Pure Michigan ads, visit http://www.michigan.org/.