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ST. LOUIS.
WE GOT IT GOOD.
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Civic ad
campaign extols the St. Louis region’s virtues, seeks 2.5 million
boosters.
By Kevin Kipp
If you’re one of those people who feel about St. Louis the way Gertrude
Stein feels about Oakland (“There’s no there there,” she
wrote of its insipidity), Emmis Broadcast executive John Beck has
a message for you.
In fact, virtually all of Beck’s fellow broadcasters in the St.
Louis region have joined his effort. Perhaps you’ve heard their
message: This is a splendid place to live and do business.
Or as the Schupp Company Inc. agency expresses it in somewhat catchier
advernacular, “St. Louis. We Got it Good.”
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The “St. Louis. We Got it Good.” campaign points
out St. Louis’ strengths in comparison to other
cities. This print ad focuses on the region’s traffic
and the fact that of 25 cities with the largest
Central Business Districts, St. Louis has the 5th
lowest commute time with an average of 23.2 minutes
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Thanks to the exhortations of Beck, the cooperation of committee
leaders at the RCGA, and advertising development from Schupp, St.
Louisans got a tongue-in-cheek peek at living in the Elysian Fields
of elsewhere: For instance, paying $1,900 a month to rent a walk-in
closet of an apartment in New York; rooting for Boston teams that
choke or—let’s talk Red Sox—relive the myth of Sisyphus each season
(see also: Chicago Cubs); and commuting by parachute in La-La Land.
Er, L.A.
(Some cost-of-living indexes, in fact, show that housing in Boston
is more expensive than New York. Moreover, Tax-achusetts drivers
were road-enraged long before their gasoline topped $2.00 a gallon.)
“We Got it Good” spots ran in January. Beck, senior VP & market
manager for Emmis, praised his media colleagues for carrying the
ads (two 30-second television spots, two 60-second radio spots).
In the month-long, electronic media blitz, network TV stations ran
a minimum of 12 spots a week, radio ran 24 spots a week, “and for
cable, something like 40 spots a week. Many of us ran them more
often.”
Beck estimates the full-freight value of phase 1 placements and
contributed creative at around $500,000. More will follow. So will
print and outdoor ads. By year-end, he estimates, the value of all
placements will total approximately $1.5 million.
Beck is a Pittsburgher-by-birth and a self-professed lover of cities.
He married a Kansas City lass, who despite her good fortune to move
here 17 years ago, insists that her hometown’s one horse and ill-famed
World Series plunder make it a better place than here.
A rational being, he dissents. The disagreement has continued in
the trenches, hand-to-hand. Eventually Beck noticed, “The locals
agreed with her! Outsiders think St. Louis is cool. It’s the natives
who pick on it, I guess because we’re not Chicago, or we’re not
Florida.”
Indeed, St. Louisans have had a reputation for walking around as
though an imp were perched on our shoulders, incessantly whispering,
“Why would anyone in his right mind ever want to move to this parochial,
polarized, politically fragmented here? Gimme one good reason.
Can’t, can you?”
Or maybe the nabobs thought their negativity made them cool like
Gertrude. Whatever. Back to Beck: “I said, ‘Wait, we’re a good bite-size
city with all the adventures of a big city.’”
In order to combat what he saw as a civic inferiority complex run
terribly amuck, Beck resolved to launch an air war, to off the bushel
basket.
“I thought we could persuade the other broadcasters to use our biggest
asset—instant communication—where we reach 62 percent of all viewers
and 98 percent of the population [radio listeners]. It was an opportunity
to change the region’s self-image…not to mention show Congress that
we give back to the community as part of our role as trustees of
the publicly-owned airwaves.”
Beck outlined his idea for Stuart Schelp, an account executive for
the St. Louis RCGA. “He took it to Dick [Fleming, president & CEO
of the RCGA]. Dick loved it and took it to RCGA Board member Karen
Carroll.”
Fleming says, “Karen and John bring tremendous credibility to this
project as co-chairs. They could have launched a fairly ambitious
campaign just with their own stations.”
Carroll is vice president and general manager of KMOX News/Talk
1120. Emmis has five stations here: K-SHE, KIHT, WMLL-The Mall,
KPNT-The Point and FM Talk KFTK.
“It’s to everybody’s credit that Karen and John were so successful
in persuading all the others to join our campaign,” Fleming says.
“The broadcasters put together something that’s never been done
before,” Beck continues. “We’re trying to create two-and-a-half
million St. Louis pitchmen. Instead of having natives say, ‘Why
would you come here,’ we’d like them to ask, ‘You don’t know about
here?’”
And just who came up with “St. Louis. We Got it Good.”?
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The campaign touts the region’s quality of life
as being superior. Not only is the housing more
affordable, but so is the cost of living. And on
top of that, St. Louisans can go to the zoo, art
museum, Science Center and other institutions for
free.
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“That’s our line,” says Mark Schupp, whose agency’s clients include
Sprint PCS, Coca Cola, Miller Brewing, NuVox (formerly Gabriel Communications),
Duncan Hines, Yahoo! and the St. Louis Blues.
“You wanna go?” and “Do you bleed blue?” were also born at Schupp’s
shop.
Had a client paid full freight for Got-It-Good, Schupp estimates,
the cost of conception-through-post-production contributed in phase
1 would have run up to $500,000.
He credits Technoconic Studios for the majority of post-production
work. Jumby Bay also stepped in to help meet a deadline that Schupp
describes as virtually impossible.
“Instead of two-to-three months, we had three weeks, because they
needed this on the air right after Christmas,” Schupp says. “We
had to work through the Christmas holidays, but we got it done.”
And this was pro bono work. There’s more. Schupp says, “The client
[the RCGA and Beck and Carroll’s broadcasters’ committee] asked
if we would be interested in doing the work, and we said, ‘Yes,
even if it is pro bono.’ And they said, ‘Okay, it’s a competition
between you and these other two agencies.’”
Schupp, undaunted: “We had a lot of confidence in our creative firepower
to attack the project with vengeance.”
The RCGA chose not to disclose the names of the other agencies in
the competition, “They had strong concepts, too. But, we liked the
subtlety of [Schupp’s team’s] idea, and how it leaves so much of
the message up to the viewer’s interpretation,” Fleming notes.
In fact, Schupp asked two teams to compete in-house to come up with
their best concepts. The other concept, Schupp says, was to “feature
someone who knows more about cities than any living being, Godzilla,”
making him a spokesmonster for St. Louis.
“I think both campaigns deliver on being hip, contemporary and intrusive,
which means they cut through clutter,” Schupp says.
Just how good do we have it? Fleming points to a strong business
climate (in the top 10 in Fortune 500 headquarters; 3,600 life sciences
and information technology firms employing 69,000 people; 112,535
net new jobs since 1995), nationally-acclaimed cultural institutions
(Symphony, Zoo, Botanical Garden), and—among the largest metropolitan
areas—rock-bottom affordability.
“All of these indicators help explain why Fortune magazine rated
the St. Louis region as the sixth best Place to Live and Work in
the nation,” he says.
Besides all the top five or 10 lists that embrace St. Louis, there
is the Sporting News’ objective selection of St. Louis as the Best
Sports City In America in 2000.
Objective?
Consider Mark McGwire’s almost-legendary first words to then-new
Cardinal Jim Edmonds: “Welcome to baseball Heaven.” And the home
of nine World Series championships.
There’s more to St. Louis sports than the national pastime. If Fleming
brags mostly about the business of business, job creation, development
and so forth, he also enjoys a little athletic braggadocio: “Not
only did we win the Super Bowl [number XXXIV, 23-16 over Tennessee],
most informed observers say it was the best Super Bowl ever.”
(Frederick Klein pointed out in the Wall Street Journal last
January that the Super Bowl is usually lopsided and dull: Twenty-one
have been won by a two-touchdown margin or more.)
And though the Blues continue their hunt for the Stanley Cup, they
deserve some credit for qualifying for the playoffs 22 consecutive
seasons, the longest active streak in the NHL. And while predictions
are always dangerous, especially about the future, they seem likely
to beat the record of 24 consecutive playoffs set by the Montreal
Canadiens (who are to the NHL what the Cardinals are to the National
League) between 1971 and 1994.
Win lose or draw, the “We Got it Good” campaign seems to be working.
People we talked to acknowledge the existence of the inferiority
phenomenon. But speaking for themselves, they were universally high
on our town. Sort of like good “NIMBY.”
Theresa Lynch, president & owner of Project Professionals LLC, loves
the sports scene, but like Fleming, pays greater heed to our loftier
attributes. “We have tremendous opportunities for community service
in St. Louis…business, church, social service.”
Lynch chairs the Creve Coeur economic development commission, whose
central mission is to promote the mid-county area as a center for
life science and biotech. “Look at the assets we have just here
in Creve Coeur,” she says. “Monsanto, the Nidus Center, and the
Danforth Plant Science Center under construction near Olive and
Lindbergh.”
She’s delighted and excited about what life sciences portend for
employment, investment, economic development, and a better world:
“We can tout that we’re progressive, that we’re on the front edge
of the next wave of technology. It will impact health care, agriculture,
nutrition, and even the self-sufficiency of developing nations.”
It isn’t just about business, either. St. Louis, she says, is distinguished
by “its caring nature and the generosity of individuals.”
The list of Lynch’s community involvement fills a page, and she
was ready to give them all a boost. But she cites S.T.E.P., Service
Toward Empowering People, first. The 501(c)(3) recently announced
they would devote $1 million in energy assistance for low-income
families.
Sally Faith, development director at St. Charles County Community
College and St. Charles County Council member representing the 5th
district, grew up in Midtown St. Louis. At 17, she moved to St.
Charles where she eventually raised a family.
She has seen the ads, and noting the one featuring two barflies
complaining about sports in Boston, she chuckles, “They must have
some really bad teams there.”
Faith doesn’t see people walking around the St. Louis region with
a little cloud of metro-malice hanging over them. “Maybe it’s just
what we’re used to in St. Charles County, but I don’t think we have
that big of an inferiority complex either here or the metro area.
People who come to St. Louis love it, and people who move away come
back to raise their kids.”
Which is not to say she thinks the local mindset is perfect. “We
need to let go of some of the baggage of our preconceived notions,”
she says. “That’s not too Pollyanna, is it?”
Faith applauds the Got-It-Good campaign. “Anybody, anywhere needs
to be reminded of all the good things we have…to go to the Black
Rep or the Art Museum, to visit the Zoo, or [Historic] Main Street
[in St. Charles], or the Daniel Boone Home.”
Bishop Michael Sheridan of the St. Louis Archdiocese says he sees
some evidence of self-deprecation: “Certainly you run into people
who are apologetic for the area, who if they have friends on one
of the coasts, feel small-time. I’ve also met a lot of people who
are happy and proud to live here.”
Sheridan is a lifelong resident of St. Louis, except for two study
stints: his first year of undergraduate at Rockhurst University
in Kansas City (didn’t stay there 17 years, did he?), and three
years of graduate work in Rome.
“It’s tough to compare St. Louis and Rome [really?], but I’m very
happy here,” he says. “It was wonderful living in Rome, and it was
just as wonderful to come home.”
Sheridan says that his affection for home doesn’t rely on reminders
of the odious characteristics of larger-yet-lesser metropolitan
areas. “We have delightful people with open arms here…friendly and
welcoming. People from out of town have said that to me a lot.”
Granting that he, like Schupp, is in the persuasion business, the
Bishop says, “It seems that oftentimes people with that inferiority
complex haven’t even bothered to find out about what we have in
St. Louis. They know vaguely, but they haven’t attended the [Saint
Louis] Symphony, or gone to the Botanical Garden or experienced
religious life.
“We need to get them moving,” he says, “to see what’s out there.
We have a great cultural life here, and people who take advantage
of it do appreciate it.”
We closed by asking the Bishop to comment on the St. Louis region’s
original sin (and occasional object of self-deprecation)—The
High School Question. Bishop Sheridan (SLUH ’63) laughs, “I’ve
always thought it was an endearing thing, maybe because I’m used
to it.”
Besides, when in Rome…
Kevin Kipp runs Bubble Communications, a creative services and
community relations firm in St. Charles. |
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