Philadelphia broke ground nearly a decade ago when it became the first U. S. city to air a television commercial specifically aimed at LGBT tourists, inviting travelers to “get their history straight and their nightlife gay.”
To mark the 10th anniversary of that effort, the city’s tourism officials are again taking to the airwaves with the same message — but with a whole new star.
The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation unveiled its new LGBT-tourism commercial Thursday night at the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association convention in Boston.
The 30-second spot centers on drag queen Miss Richfield 1981 as she takes a “selfie tour,” capturing photos of herself exploring the city’s offerings.
This marks only the third LGBT-tourism television commercial in the nation; Key West also created a television spot in 2011.
The original 2004 commercial, which launched a year after the start of the pioneering “Get Your History Straight and Your Nightlife Gay” campaign, centered on a colonial man writing a love letter in which he asks his sweetheart, which viewers ultimately learn is a man, to meet him in Philadelphia.
The commercial and campaign, as well as the work of such agencies as the Philadelphia Gay Tourism Caucus, is largely credited with helping Philadelphia repeatedly make it onto top-10 lists of LGBT tourist destinations, whereas the city wasn’t even on top-20 lists a decade ago.
“This was the first open invitation; people have to be invited to want to go somewhere,” said GPTMC CEO Meryl Levitz. “When we started, we had a gay hotel package that a few hotels had signed onto and once they saw immediately this was taking off, pretty much every hotel signed on. But we don’t even need a specific package like that any more because it was such a convincing announcement that people know that, not only were they invited, but that they would be welcomed wherever they went in Philadelphia.”
The original commercial got a wealth of airtime from pundits from Bill O’Reilly to Jon Stewart and went on to garner the agency a number of awards.
The latest commercial was an effort to mark the growth of the city and the LGBT tourism market in the past decade while remaining cognizant of the original idea, Levitz said.
“We wanted to mark our anniversary and anyone can do something like a party, but we wanted a convincing way to say that we’re still staying true to our message,” Levitz said. “So we decided to remessage, using everything we have today and focusing on the growth of Philadelphia itself in the past 10 years.”
The commercial follows the history-to-nightlife structure, but branches out far beyond the original backdrop of Independence Hall, as Richfield visits locales like the Liberty Bell and the National Constitution Center, and grabs a photo sewing a rainbow flag with a colonial impersonator. She also introduces viewers to the bar and nightlife scene, and dances amid a crowd of LGBTs that many in the community are sure to recognize. The commercial finishes with Richfield collapsing on a rainbow-filled hotel-room bed, encouraging viewers to make their trip to Philadelphia an overnight one.
GPTMC director of public relations Bruce Yelk said Richfield was a perfect fit for the role.
“We’ve had a great partnership since 2011. She’s out on the road championing Philadelphia as she goes from city to city and she does a great job for us,” Yelk said. “People adore her, and not just in the gay community, but in the straight community as well. She has a strong appeal to our demographic — the 30-plus group — as that’s her market as well. In the gay community, if you know her, there’s instant buy-in, but even if you don’t and you see her, she’s a likeable character. She’s a performer.”
The new commercial will begin airing next month and through October nationwide on Logo and in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., markets on Bravo and Style.
