Re-branding A City

July 31, 2008 | Uncategorized

I hadn’t been to a major league baseball game since I was about 9 years old which, in case you’re wondering, was some time ago. So when I got the opportunity to go to a game — in what ESPN calls one of the best major-league baseball stadiums in the country — I jumped at the opportunity.

What I didn’t realize was that this hometown-team’s city has become one of the top-rated mid-size cities in America. It has been rated as one of the best places to live in America. And Frommer’s Guidebooks has rated it as one of the “Top Destinations for 2008″ — right up there with Denver, Essaouira (Morocco) and Kosrae in Micronesia.

If you live there you’ve probably already guessed its name. If you don’t, sit down. It’s Pittsburgh. Yes, Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh?

I wound up there about a month ago attending a public relations conference. Driving in from the airport I started chatting with the taxi driver, a young African-American guy in his early twenties. I like talking to taxi drivers since I’ve found them to be a great source on what’s going on in any city, great fountains of information of what’s right, who’s wrong and why the local team didn’t win last night.

“So what’s it like living in Pittsburgh?” I asked.

His answer knocked me back. “This is really a great city to live in now,” he told me. “They’ve done so much in the past few years to make it great.” Well, I thought, it’s obvious the local tourism people have put together a program to get cab drivers to hype the city. You know, make them ambassadors on wheels for all the visitors coming in from the airport.

But the fact is there isn’t any taxi-driver program — this guy just loved his city. And over the next few days I found he has a lot of company — especially over at VisitPittsburgh, the city’s tourism arm. Talk with those folks and you’re met with a tsunami of Pittsburgh facts — including “firsts” (first ferris wheel, first polio vaccine, first night World Series game, etc.), films shot on location (Silence of the Lambs, Lorenzo’s Oil, Hoffa, etc.), famous Pittsburghers (Henry Mancini, Rachel Carson, Joe Montana, etc.), famous foods (the Big Mac, Heinz Ketchup, the Klondike Bar, etc.), etc., etc. and etc. Adding fuel to the fire, the city is celebrating its 250^th anniversary this year.

Walking around downtown Pittsburgh four things quickly caught my attention: the city’s incredible number of bridges (the most of any city in the world), it cleanliness, its rich cultural life (while Pittsburgh doesn’t even make the list of the 50 largest US cities, it ranks second only to New York City in the sale of theater tickets), and civic spirit. You can see plenty of the latter on the 6th Street Bridge before a ball game, when it is closed to vehicles to allow people to walk over to PNC Park from downtown to watch a Pirates game after work.

Oh, I just thought of two other things also: 1) if you’re a fireworks fan the display over the river after some games is world-class (you can see a short video of it on Google by clicking here), and 2) I suspect the city may have already used up its quota of National Historic Landmark plaques.

I can’t devote enough space here to give you a whirlwind tour of the city. There are plenty of articles and guides which provide that, including the recent article “Pittsburgh forges ahead” by USA Today’s Jayne Clark, who attended the same conference I did.

But from a tourism marketing perspective, the real story is not about spending a pleasant few days in Pittsburgh. The real story is how a city smudged with a long-standing reputation for grime and grit relaunched and rebranded itself in such a way that it shot up to near the top of the “must sees” and “most livable cities” lists.  Understandably, according to Beverly Morrow-Jones, VisitPittsburgh’s Executive Director of Marketing & Communications, it was — and continues to be — quite an effort.

One of the most visible things that was done was to change the name of the non-profit Pittsburgh Convention & Visitors Bureau to the present VisitPittsburgh. According to Morrow-Jones “we wanted something more understandable — there was a lot of confusion with the PCVB — people thought we were owned by city (which they’re not) or that we owned the Convention Center (which they don’t). The new name has become terrific tool for establishing the brand.”

The main challenge has been convincing people that it’s not a smoky, dirty city. It’s always been known as a steel town, says Morrow-Jones, but there haven’t been any mills downtown for nearly 25 years. The city just isn’t like what it was in the 1970’s.

Key to the rebranding has been VisitPittsburgh’s public relations and communications efforts to bring more writers to the city on familiarization trips to let them see for themselves. “That’s the best way to get message out,” says Morrow-Jones.  Another way is to ensure a very positive personal experience for conventioneers, which is why the city is continually promoted as safe, clean and walkable, “important for both conventioneers and tourists alike,” she says.

With a career spent in marketing, Morrow-Jones knows that in building a brand a CVB can’t just conjure an image it wants to project, but needs to root its marketing program in reality. Her advice for other cities which are in their own uphill fight to rebrand and grab greater tourism market share: concentrate on your strengths, don’t dilute your message and don’t just paint a pretty picture if you’re not pretty. “We deliver what we promise,” she says.

Some years back, in an article by Brendan Gill in The New Yorker, the city received one of its greatest tributes. ”If Pittsburgh were situated somewhere in the heart of Europe,” Gill wrote, “tourists would eagerly journey hundreds of miles out of their way to visit it.” Today, launched by a good marketing campaign, the city is getting the word out that the promise is now greater than ever.

One night about a month ago that promise even made its way into PNC Park, as the Pirates beat the Blue Jays 1 - 0 in the 12th.

Jim Ferri