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While it is impolitic for one person in advertising to criticize another's "work,"* I feel that the rules are different when the effort in question is produced by a conglomerate.

(* It is also only fair to submit a competing idea, as I will do. Maybe it sucks more. So. I live here too.) 

I am questioning the effort put forth recently by a number of design and public relations firms (at the pleasure of Rybak and that guy in St. Paul) to promote Minneapolis and St. Paul.

The theme is "MSP. More to LIfe."  

What?

This is a product of a camel which is nothing more than a horse designed by a committee. 

If they wanted to take nice photos of the Twin Cities and leave it at that (and the photography is really exceptional) it might have some merit. But as it stands it is simply boring, not buzzy. Buzz is what gets people talking, feeling and thinking about places, people and things.  

I ran a campaign for the City of Excelsior in this very magazine (when it was a magazine) for the price of a photoshoot catering budget. I can't say it was the best campaign of all time but I do know it returned almost two million dollars in local, national and international buzz. 

Whoever did this MSP thing should give me a buzz. 

Or get a life.

MY IDEA (GIVEN FOR FREE DUE TO A CONFLICT OF INTEREST). The current MSP campaign sounds alot like "get a life." I am sure they spent a fortune on research proving that people feel there's nothing to do here or have a low opinion of the place.

Incredible.

No one who has spent any time here can deny that there is a zeitgeist about Minnesota. Buillding a brand requires a recognition of that fact.

Minnesota is perceived, nationally, as an ice box and not much else. Yet people love to raise their families here. To put it in the words of a NYC expatriate, "Minneapolis St Paul is a great place to live but you'd never want to visit."

So, if the objective of the urrent MSP campaign is to get people from out of town to visit why not be contrarian and use this as a campaign? Hell, it shows we're sardonic. Sardonic (as Jon Stewart shows) sells.

My second idea, ironically, has already been partially produced. The current campaign features photography with a "hot and rich" quality that look fantastic when it is backlit. It just needs positioning.

Like...

Are you ready?

ClubMN

OK. OK. Not so fast. Here's what you have to do my friends. Find these photographers and use them to snap more pictures that make MSP look exotic. Bikinis on white sand. State Fair Freak Show. The new W and the interior of the Graves 601 for chrisssake. The stuff we have that you never see.

I am talking about Minnesota as the latest antidote to civilization--to borrow a great old line from ClubMED. 

And copyright schopyright.

Every conglomerate has a team of lawyers. 

They can make it so. 

And then this campaign will have some go.