Out-of-staters react to RI tourism campaign

March 30, 2016 6:48 pm

By: Rebecca Turco

Email: rturco@abc6.com

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Rhode Island’s new tourism campaign has been slow to catch on here, but in other parts of the country, it’s being embraced.

The campaign slogan, Rhode Island: Cooler and Warmer, is “cool” to Colleen Spitz in California. She has some experience in slogans, as vice president of marketing and communications for the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.

Her response: “Sacramento needs to pay a visit!”

Spitz says she loves the minimalist logo – “It’s clean, it’s crisp and it’s visual” – and she feels the slogan helps clear outsiders’ misperceptions: "Oftentimes folks think of Rhode Island and they think cold, so I really think [Rhode Island is] flipping that in a different direction which is good."

Not everyone outside the Rhode Island bubble understands it though. Over in Kentucky, the head of tourism for Ohio County is left scratching her head: “Cooler than what, warmer than what? It actually put a question in my mind rather than be some[where] that I wanted to definitely go see right away."

Back in Rhode Island, the logo has become a source of parody for some and even biting commentary for others.

Meanwhile, local artists are coming up with pitches of their own, like Rhode Island: A Tiny State, A Lot to Offer. Graphic design artist and Johnson and Wales University Professor Karyn Jimenez-Elliott, came up with it. “My purpose to my design of my logo is to capture [Rhode Island],” she explained. “From the arts industry, everything down to Newport, polo design and everything in between.”

In the meantime, an online petition is circulating, demanding the governor change the tourism campaign.