Philadelphia tourism campaign loosens up with ‘Phillyosophy’ strategy

Published January 13, 2014 at 7:06 am

There’s a lot of obvious value in creating a buzzword about your product that can easily be shared: hashtags, merchandise, and the culture zeitgeist can all be yours with a well-crafted piece of verbiage. It all depends on opportunity, and a bit on luck as well.

Try this one on for size: Phillyosophy.

It might toe that “fine line between stupid and clever” mentioned by Spinal Tap, or it might just be marketing genius for Philadelphia’s latest tactic for promoting tourism in the city. It’s an evolution (and continuation) of an earlier campaign concocted for the same reason “With Love, Philadelphia XOXO.”

Images tied to this campaign focus on photographs of specific local attractions and events, making them look colorful and warm, and also including the phrase “My Phillyosophy,” undoubtedly in the hopes that it could catch on.

Unfortunately for Philadelphia’s tourism agency, however, it’s working at a handicap of millions of dollars fewer than it had previously been allocated, thanks to a budget cut. Philly.com quoted the president of this agency, Meryl Levitz, on their desire to make this effort take off.

“We want to use every single kind of media outlet that we can because the stuff is gorgeous,” Levitz said. “I don’t mean just in Philly. Back in the day we used to be able to go on TV in our target markets.”

Can you boil down your new marketing approach to one word? There’s no guarantee that it’ll be a goldmine if you can, but the possibilities are there for you to take advantage.