At Business Insider, Jim Edwards continues his ongoing reporting and online scuffling involving GlobalHue and the Bermuda Tourism account. Now the ex-Premier of Bermuda is questioning Edwards via an email exchange with racist references. Additionally, Edwards has been offered an all-expenses-paid trip to extend the debate. Don’t expect any updates to be filed from a Bermuda beach.
New York Times Advertising Columnist Stuart Elliott reported on the new Bermuda Tourism campaign from Fuseideas in Boston. After all the drama and alleged illegal activities surrounding the account and former AOR GlobalHue, this latest campaign seems criminal in its absolute lameness.
Bermuda’s New Pitch Is Short: ‘So Much More’
By Stuart Elliott
A popular vacation destination is trying again to encourage tourists to expect the unexpected, as well as all that visitors have traditionally traveled there for.
The goal is explicit in the theme of a campaign on behalf of the Bermuda Department of Tourism: “So much more.” The campaign, now under way, plays up cultural and culinary attractions and diversions like scuba diving and golf along with mainstays like the pink sand beaches and Bermuda’s proximity to the East Coast.
The campaign is the first work for the Bermuda tourism department from a new creative agency, Fuseideas in Boston, which was selected after a review that concluded in March. Fuseideas has also worked on travel campaigns for Florida, Maine and Massachusetts.
The budget for the Bermuda campaign is $4.8 million through early next year. The campaign is wide-ranging, including television and radio commercials; print, outdoor and online ads; the official tourism department Web site, gotobermuda.com; promotions; direct marketing like e-mail and newsletters; brochures; public relations; and social media like Facebook and Twitter.
The “So much more” theme replaces ads that urged potential visitors to Bermuda to “Feel the love.” Before that, Bermuda used ad themes that included “Let yourself go.”
There is a “fundamental difference” between “Feel the love” and “So much more,” says William Griffith, director for tourism at the Bermuda Department of Tourism in Hamilton, Bermuda.
The previous theme “is a statement,” Mr. Griffith says. “ ‘So much more’ evolves out of everything that is Bermuda and encompasses all that is unique to Bermuda.”
“‘So much more’ came from the Bermudians themselves,” he adds, and points tourists to “adventure, culture, history, restaurants and food.”
The theme also underlines initiatives by tourism officials to make Bermuda “more of a 12-month destination,” Mr. Griffith says, and continue efforts to differentiate Bermuda from the Caribbean.
(Yes, although Bermuda is “not the Caribbean,” Mr. Griffith notes, being “much farther north,” it still needs to remind Americans exactly where it is — and is not.)
The campaign is part of a national tourism master plan that Bermuda recently adopted, Mr. Griffith says, with a strategy of “leveraging the top strengths of the island” to help market it.
… part of the UBP’s Throne Speech reply … claimed that multi-million dollar contracts went to friends of the Government untendered with huge cost overruns and no-one held to account were ordered to be struck from the record of the House of Assembly.
… the UBP claimed that Global Hue, a US advertiser, renewed its Government contract in May which was valued at $28 million over two years. The UBP said the contract was not tendered and described its owner, Don Coleman [below], as a “longtime friend” of Premier Ewart Brown.
Last Friday, during the House of Assembly debate on the Speech from the Throne, Government MPs, with the active support of Deputy Speaker Dame Jennifer Smith, ordered the removal of a passage in the Opposition’s Reply to the Speech that they disagreed with.
The “offending” sentence, delivered by Opposition Leader Mr. Kim Swan earlier in the day, read as follows:
“We get million dollar contracts that go directly to friends untendered and massive cost overruns with no one held to account.”
Mr. Swan later described the removal of the sentence from the official record as an “act of censorship.”
“This has certainly not been the strongest language ever used in a Reply, nor is it the first time this particular concern has been made,” he said.
“Indeed, our last Throne Speech Reply questioned why tens of millions of dollars in Government contracts ‘have been handed over to an axis of two or three construction bosses close to the Premier?’”
The following summary of major Government projects and expenditures is, we believe, enough to substantiate the wording of the excised sentence and to reveal its removal as an act of censorship:
Global Hue
• The US advertiser received a renewal of its advertising contract with the government in May 2009, valued at $28 million over two years.
• The contract was not tendered.
• Global Hue is owned by Mr. Don Coleman, whom The Royal Gazette has described as a “longtime friend” of the Premier’s. In a February 2009 special report on Global Hue, the Auditor General substantiated that description when he reported the ‘pressure’ felt by Tourism officials to approve payments to Global Hue because of the “close relationship that Global Hue has, and influence it has, with the Minister of Tourism and Transport.”
• The contract renewal was made despite significant performance questions. Competitive bids might have offered greater efficiencies and better advertising plans.
