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Omaha gets brand new campaign
BY C. DAVID KOTOK
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Holy cow. Not again.
Didn't the Omaha Convention and Visitors Bureau just scrap the
ill-fated slogan "Rare. Well Done"?
So why has the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce launched a new
advertising campaign in the Wall Street Journal with a cow picture
captioned "Livestock"?
Wait, that's "Live Stock."
Both advertising campaigns - old and new - play on words and attempt to
capitalize on stereotypes of Omaha. But the differences are huge,
insists the chamber spokeswoman, and that's no bull.
The chamber advertising campaign is geared toward landing new
businesses and the jobs they bring, said the chamber's Sharon Brodkey,
not toward attracting tourist and conventioneers.
"This is aimed at the C-level executives," said Brodkey, public
relations director at the chamber.
Translation: Top corporate executives, as in CEOs, CFOs, COOs and CIOs.
The first ad has been published in trade magazines. The first of four
weekly ads to appear in the Journal was published Tuesday. The chamber
declined to say what it is spending on the campaign.
The "Livestock" ad is the first of four designed by Omaha-based Zaiss &
Co.
The emphasis is on how Omaha, "a once booming cow town," is something
quite different today. "Live Stock" refers to stock prices, with Omaha
home base to five Fortune 500 companies.
The other three advertisements also play off Omaha's past as a rural,
western outpost to make the point that it is now an attractive, modern
metropolitan area that is good for business:
• "Pioneers" plays off a small photo of a family in front of a sod
house, contrasting it with a larger photo of a man in front of a
complex molecular image. The man is Simon Sherman, a bioinformatics
researcher at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
• "Westward Expansion" shifts from a photo of a covered wagon to one of
an industrial business park in suburban Omaha with available space. The
ad names companies that have moved to Omaha or expanded in the city
recently: PayPal, Aflac Inc., Booz Allen Hamilton.
• "Plains" becomes "Planes" in an advertisement focusing on the city's
central location and ready access to transportation by planes, trains
and trucks to anywhere in the country.
Outmoded concepts of Omaha are turned on their heads in the commercial
messages, said Brodkey and Tracy Zaiss, the advertising executive who
created the ads.
"This flies in the face of what people think they know about Omaha,"
Zaiss said. "You know what they say, 'to take off, you fly into the
wind.'"
In addition to corporate decision makers, the campaign takes aim at
business site-selection consultants through trade publications and at
particular businesses. For example, the pioneer ad will run in
biotechnology magazines.
Data processing, medical equipment and value-added agriculture
companies are among the specific industries getting extra attention,
Brodkey said.
The Wall Street Journal reaches all those who might be involved in
locating a plant, distribution center or office, she said.
One way this is so different from a slogan for tourism and conventions
can be found in the smaller print. Transportation access, low-priced
utilities, telecommunications capacity, affordable office space and tax
incentives are stressed.
"Tourists don't care about that," Brodkey said. "Tourists never ask
about the sewer system."
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