Editorial: New city marketing campaign may have legs

By: JournalNow Staff | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: February 05, 2012

If you appreciate a good chef's ability to mix flavors to give food a certain and even surprising sophistication — not forgetting to marry it with the perfect wine — then you might understand Visit Winston-Salem's new marketing strategy. It literally combines the city's most prominent assets — its art, food, culture and history — to create something unique.

The concept just could turn out to be pretty good.

It's the blending of these things that are so-Winston-Salem that we believe gives the idea a power that is greater than the sum of its parts, as they say. And that seems to be the idea. The campaign will feature logos, for example, that blend images of art and food. One such logo is an image from the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, SECCA, in a silhouette of a cast-iron skillet, the Journal's Richard Craver reported. Another example shows the image of Piedmont Craftsmen shoppers set against a plate, fork and knife.

Visit Winston-Salem, the tourism bureau, plans to create similar images for large events, such as the National Black Theatre Festival and the RiverRun Film Festival.

"Winston-Salem, Your Southern Wake-up Call" is the name of the campaign that is part of a $175,000, 18-month project paid for the Forsyth County Tourism Development Authority, which oversees Visit Winston-Salem. The idea is to lure the "leisure traveler" to stop and stay overnight or longer to experience the city's arts, culture, history and culinary delights.

"Winston-Salem clearly has many attractive venues, attractions and destination-defining festivals that key audiences would love to experience," said Richard Geiger, president of the bureau.

Amy Consiglio, a partner with Pursuit of Happiness of Greensboro, a company that redesigned Winston-Salem's website last year, told the Journal that the goal is to portray Winston-Salem as a "charming Southern stop with unexpected finds not too far off the beaten path."

The campaign begins in June with print and radio advertising, as well as billboards and public-relations efforts in the Southeast and in New York.

The success will depend on the quality of the campaign, but at least from our perspective we think the tourism bureau has hit on something. If you live in Winston-Salem, you know that the experience of our city is often a combination of things — the symphony followed by an intimate dinner, a show at the new arts center and drinks at a packed club on Fourth Street.

We're excited about Visit Winston-Salem's new strategy. Maybe we can now clean the storeroom of those old "O! Winston-Salem" banners.