New $1.5 million marketing effort to create brand for N.C.

By Richard M. Barron/News & Record richard.barron@news-record.com

RALEIGH — If you’ve heard a great state slogan, you don’t forget it.

Michigan — a cold, economically depressed place to many folks in North Carolina — has done a pretty good job of jazzing up its image to tourists with “Pure Michigan.”

“Virginia is for Lovers” remains timeless.

But who remembers “Variety Vacationland”?

Anybody?

Well, a slogan is a pretty big deal — enough to make it onto Wednesday’s agenda of the N.C. Economic Development Board, a part of the N.C. Department of Commerce.

Starting in the 1930s, that little slogan represented the state’s first ad campaign aimed at tourists. It brought in millions of dollars.

Today, the state doesn’t really have much of an identity to people across the nation, according to the Department of Commerce. North Carolina needs “branding,” David Rhoades, the department’s director of marketing, told the Economic Development Board on Wednesday. More here.