ZZ Top "My Houston" commercial

[editor]

This morning while watching the morning news on WGN-TV I saw something really cool. In between the usual parade of lame window replacement commercials and weak carpet replacement commercials was an ad for Houston tourism featuring ZZ Top:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvEdMpeUENA

Judging from the comments on the commercial's YouTube page, it looks like it's about a year old, but it's the first time I've seen it up here in Chicago.

I think it's pretty well done. This time of year we always get A LOT of tourism ads running in this market. This year the stand-outs have been Montana; Saint Petersburg/Clearwater, Florida; and Saint Louis. Spain, Turkey, and Orlando have been pretty weak.

Much to the consternation of a particular group of angry HAIFers who think Houston shouldn't have a tourism industry, I think the ad is done well enough for people to actually consider checking out Houston this year. Hopefully this is one in a series of ads and more will pop up here soon.

[kylejack]

I love ZZ Top as much as the next guy, but I wish the commercial had more images of Houston.

[Fringe]

I've never seen it before either. Pretty cool. 

[TheNiche]

Much to the consternation of a particular group of angry HAIFers who think Houston shouldn't have a tourism industry, I think the ad is done well enough for people to actually consider checking out Houston this year. Hopefully this is one in a series of ads and more will pop up here soon.

I know that that was a dig at folks like myself, but I agree with you that the commercial certainly garners the audience's attention, and probably appeals well enough to a market segment that would respond well to it and to Houston. Like yourself, I wish that there'd been more shots of Houston, but that'd require more air time, and that gets expensive. I think that the message got through without it.

I also think that the commercial conveys an aura of genuineness that is appropriate for a city like Houston, which always seeks to leverage its strengths rather than apologize for its weaknesses with cheap imitations/simulations. We tend to allocate scarce resources only to those projects that yield the highest bang for the buck, whether that's pertaining to tourism or economic development or transportation. We're a city of engineers. It's what we do. And no, we aren't cool. That's why we're so cool.

[AtticaFlinch]

I know that that was a dig at folks like myself, but I agree with you that the commercial certainly garners the audience's attention, and probably appeals well enough to a market segment that would respond well to it and to Houston.

I'd actually spent some time detailing the reasons why Houston shouldn't focus our attention on vacation travelers considering we're already a top destination for business travelers (according to Forbes we're the ninth most visted city in the US and that's almost completely all with business travelers), but then I figured, "why bother?" Some angry HAIFers are under the impression Houston needs to be all things for all people, rather than focus on our strengths of pragmatism and reliability, but whatevs. No amount of positive reasons not to focus our efforts on attracting a bunch of tourists would be enough to convince that angry contingent.

[Jeebus]

I'm one of those who would prefer Houston not become a tourist trap, but I don't think that this commercial did anything to contribute to that. We need more media like this, just letting everyone know that we're a great town to live, work, and play in.

I liked it.

[Fringe]

I know that that was a dig at folks like myself, but I agree with you that the commercial certainly garners the audience's attention, and probably appeals well enough to a market segment that would respond well to it and to Houston.  Like yourself, I wish that there'd been more shots of Houston, but that'd require more air time, and that gets expensive.  I think that the message got through without it.

I also think that the commercial conveys an aura of genuineness that is appropriate for a city like Houston, which always seeks to leverage its strengths rather than apologize for its weaknesses with cheap imitations/simulations.  We tend to allocate scarce resources only to those projects that yield the highest bang for the buck, whether that's pertaining to tourism or economic development or transportation.  We're a city of engineers.  It's what we do.  And no, we aren't cool.  That's why we're so cool.

Not to mention it will attract all the dopers to our great city!

[ricco67]

While I don't think Houston should gear itself to be a "tourist" city, there are enough things here to attract quite a few tourists for a variety of reasons.

I've met people who came here to check out Englewood Yard(which really surprised me), Kemah, the art car scene , the various concerts, and a surprising amount of people that just want to check out Houston for the things I wouldn't have thought would be "touristy" like Montrose, Medical Center, and the various trails.

We are a more of a "Tourist" destination than we think we are, but living here we just don't see it.

[mkultra25]

Some angry HAIFers are under the impression Houston needs to be all things for all people, rather than focus on our strengths of pragmatism and reliability, but whatevs. No amount of positive reasons not to focus our efforts on attracting a bunch of tourists would be enough to convince that angry contingent.

I'm waiting for someone to register at HAIF using the screen name "Angry HAIFer". The avatar possibilities are endless.

[Subdude]

The commercial seemed more about ZZ Top than Houston. It didn't seem to me that it would make people sit up and say "Gee, I want to visit Houston!"

I also think that the commercial conveys an aura of genuineness that is appropriate for a city like Houston, ...We're a city of engineers.

How so?

[TheNiche]

The commercial seemed more about ZZ Top than Houston. It didn't seem to me that it would make people sit up and say "Gee, I want to visit Houston!"

Well yeah, and a lot of ZZ Top songs are inspired by bizarre things that happened to them in and around Houston that speak to our culture and attitudes. Master of Sparks comes to mind.

Your take on it reminds me of something that an old marketing professor used to say. "If an advertisement doesn't make sense to you, then you aren't its audience."

How so?

I used to have employment data that was broken out very differently from the way that the BLS does it, with a tremendous amount of detail. By adding up the percent of our employment that was in engineering-intensive line items and then doing the same thing with other major U.S. cities, I determined that Houston wipes the floor with every other city. (This would've been about three or four years ago and I think that I did post the cliff notes somewhere in the deep recesses of HAIF, but I wouldn't know where to begin searching for it.)

And it should make sense. We have a tremendous amount of civil and industrial infrastructure in Houston to maintain (and replace, from time-to-time), we are a growth magnet so that new structures and infrastructure are constantly being built, we have monopolized upstream/midstream/downstream oil & gas engineering (including a surprisingly-large energy-related software development niche), we engage in massive flood control projects through HCFCD and thousands of smaller projects through individual developers, we have one of the world's busiest ports, and we have a huge presence by multinational engineering firms like KBR and Fluor. We also have NASA, which is a huge shot in the arm. Then consider what we don't have. We don't have a national or state capitol, we don't have a large military presence, we don't have a mega-university or an ivy league university (and are too large for one to have a huge impact), we don't have excessively-large local government bureaucracies (like in NYC or LA), and we don't have an especially large financial/accounting presence or a Federal Reserve bank here (only a branch of the DallasFed).

Out of our largest corporations, the vast majority produce and market raw materials or intermediate goods to other businesses...a far more engineering-intensive role than companies that market finished goods and services to consumers.