Raimondo asking R.I. Department of Administration to help review error-filled tourism marketing campaign

GOV. GINA M. RAIMONDO said she is asking the R.I. Department of Administration to help review what contributed to the error-filled rollout of the state’s $5 million tourism marketing campaign.   / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
GOV. GINA M. RAIMONDO said she is asking the R.I. Department of Administration to help review what contributed to the error-filled rollout of the state’s $5 million tourism marketing campaign. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

PROVIDENCE – Gov. Gina M. Raimondo is asking the R.I. Department of Administration to help review what contributed to the error-filled rollout of the state’s $5 million tourism marketing campaign.
Raimondo on Wednesday told reporters the DOA would assist R.I. Commerce Corporation in its in-house review of what’s now become a highly controversial campaign strategy that’s garnered widespread criticism from people both inside and outside of the state since it started on March 28.
“We’re certainly doing a review and going through step-by-step to see what happened,” she said.
Since the rollout the fallout has been precipitous. Last Friday, Rhode Island’s chief marketing officer, Betsy Wall, resigned after only holding the position for about a month. The state dropped its planned slogan, “Rhode Island: Cooler & Warmer,” which incited widespread confusion and ridicule on social media.
The state is asking a local firm, IndieWhip, to pay back $20,000 it received for producing a Rhode Island promotional video that initially included footage of someone skateboarding in Iceland. HAVAS PR, a New York public relations firm, has also been asked to pay back $100,000.
Commerce RI board member Karl Wadensten earlier this week called for a “post-mortem” review of what went wrong, saying, “If we don’t have clarity on this, how are [we] going to go forward?”
Last week, Raimondo announced Seth Goldenberg, CEO of Epic Decade of Jamestown, would take over the campaign in an interim capacity. The state will keep its new logo, which was designed by Milton Glaser Inc., the creator of “I Love NY.” But in an April 6 interview with the New York Times, Glaser criticized the state’s tourism team, saying it failed to “lay the groundwork for the end product and provide context for it,” according to the article.
“People became crazed by the idea that they didn’t get it,” he told the newspaper. “If you rolled it out over weeks, you could have made a case for it. But in the absence of a real presentation, and the presence of so many mistakes, the whole thing became enshrouded in negativity. The social media thing is a killer.”
Details about how the DOA will be involved in the review of the campaign were not discussed. However, looking forward, Raimondo said Goldenberg would incorporate a greater amount of public input in the next rollout.
“I think the biggest mistake … [has been] the lack of public engagement, so I’ve directed the team, saying they have to do a better job,” she said. “Give us a few days, or a week-or-two, but that’s exactly the plan.”

No posts to display

1 COMMENT

  1. Just heard about this problem and looked at the tourism video in the NYT article which I thought was very good. The Iceland insert was over in a blink of an eye and I was now even more amazed by the overreaction to this small error given the context of the message and its quality. Talk about making mountain out of molehill.