The city’s tourism bureau recently eliminated a public-relations position that was held by a longtime out staffer who was involved with a number of LGBT initiatives.
Bruce Yelk was let go from his position as director of public relations at Visit Philly, effective July 31.
Yelk joined the agency in 2002 and held positions such as accounting assistant, human-resources director and director of LGBT initiatives before his most recent post. He said that, while he no longer held the LGBT title, he still helped lead LGBT initiatives. His most recent position involved LGBT-focused press pitches, trade-show and sponsorship plans and social-media work, among other duties.
Yelk was involved in launching the agency’s 2003 “Get Your History Straight and Your Nightlife Gay” campaign, an award-winning initiative that has since been used as a model for LGBT tourism efforts.
Vice president of communications Paula Butler said the move was part of a reorganizing effort.
“We have not eliminated any LGBT or gay-marketing initiative. Nothing,” she said. “All we have eliminated is the job of director of public relations in a reorganization we have done; we have had to change our strategies because social media has become so much more important.”
Butler said the agency plans to hire a social-media/media-relations manager whose duties will include pitching LGBT stories to media outlets and social-media postings that will take in LGBT topics, she said.
LGBT marketing will be unaffected, Butler contended.
“The LGBT marketing is an interdepartmental effort here and there are about 10 people on that team,” she said. “They’re in advertising, web, social media, media relations, research; they’re all here and working on the LGBT market.”
Yelk noted a number of highlights from his tenure with the company, including the pioneering LGBT ad campaign, which included the first-ever LGBT-tourism television commercial for a U.S. destination.
“Being part of that initial launch team, when other cities weren’t doing any gay marketing at all and we released the first gay commercial, was really fun,” he said. “And, personally for me, creating the second commercial with Miss Richfield when there were zero dollars for it was really an accomplishment. I’m really proud to have gotten that on the air when a lot of people were saying it couldn’t be done.”
This past year in particular included a number of accomplishments, Yelk added.
Visit Philly was involved in a yearlong promotion of the Annual Reminders 50th-anniversary celebration.
“We got a huge amount of press on that,” he said, noting that, by the time of his departure, there had been about 2,200 media stories on LGBT Philadelphia in 2015.
Being prepared for the Annual Reminders and newsmakers like this summer’s Supreme Court ruling were integral to that effort, Yelk said.
“I’m really proud of how proactive we were in looking down the road and being ready. We rolled out an ad with two women holding hands at the Liberty Bell that had a video with it literally almost at the moment of the Supreme Court decision,” he said. “We were really prepared and that ended up being a great social-media tactic and a huge media win; we ended up being cited for best practices in print and online stories for how businesses reacted to the ruling. And we had the same approach with the Pennsylvania ruling; we saw the potential thing and were ready for it as soon as it happened, so I’m really proud we took those opportunities.”
Philadelphia also was just selected as the host of the 2017 Creating Change conference, a large-scale national LGBT convention.
“I’m really proud of my work this year,” Yelk said. “This was an amazing year for me. And it was a great 13 years overall.”
