Recently, I came across this story about a North Dakota tourism campaign and its questionable decision to include nightlife as one of the state's many tourism attractions.
Image courtesy North Dakota Tourism Division
Having been to Fargo just once, I’m really not qualified to say whether the depiction was an accurate portrayal of North Dakota after hours. Though I have my serious doubts.
As for the copy, I’m just not sure what the take-away was supposed to be. It reads: “Drinks, dinner, decisions. Arrive a guest. Leave a legend.” That does seem a bit racy for a state that has chosen square dancing as its official dance and who is better known for roaming buffalo than socializing hipsters.
But then my curiosity led me here, where I discovered “Legendary” is the campaign tagline. That makes more sense, but now more than ever, I’m feeling like the perceived raciness isn’t the problem; it’s actually the force-fit of the tag directly into the copy.
I haven’t seen the other nine ads in the campaign, so I don’t know if they do a better job of transforming the overarching theme line into body copy. But I can say that this has taught me to be careful of literal usage of a tagline when it's not a natural fit.
Share your perspective. Where do you think this ad went wrong?
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