When Julia Louis-Dreyfus offered up a stark view of Columbia, Maryland—where her HBO series, Veep, is filmed—residents didn’t take kindly to it.
Even though she tweeted an apology for the remarks she made in a Vulture interview, residents went on defense with tweets of their own saying things like, “#AwesomeColumbia is where we work, play & live to give! We don’t care what others say…this is our beautiful #homesweethome!”
In a video shared via YouTube, Howard County Executive Ken Ulman got his team together to list on a whiteboard what Columbia has to offer. It wasn’t bad, but Ulman, the town and its residents still missed an opportunity. As the old saying goes, a good offense is the best defense, and there are ways social media can be brought to bear to turn Dreyfus’ unintentional slam into tourism-marketing gold.
I’m not much for Monday morning quarterbacking (and I apologize for two football cliches in one post), but I’ve seen a town do it right.
The town is Coos Bay, which, according to its website, is “surrounded by a beautiful bay, lush emerald forests and the mighty Pacific Ocean” and “continues to celebrate its history in shipbuilding, lumber products and tradition as the regional hub for Oregon’s south coast.”
In 2009, communications professionals Lee Hopkins and Allan Jenkins were planning a trip to IABC‘s world conference in San Francisco. Hopkins is from Adelaide, Australia and Jenkins (who has since returned to his native South Carolina) had been living for decades in Denmark. Rather than just fly into San Francisco, attend the conference, then fly home, they decided to get together far north of the Bay Area, rent a car, and see the sights on the trip south.
To that end, they put the word out through social channels, asking where to go, what to see, and, specifically, “What towns should we stop in?”
Coos Bay responded. They set up a Flickr account dedicated to “great photos of the area to convince bloggers @leehopkins and @allanjenkins to make us one of their stops on their Seattle to San Francisco trip.” The account invited locals to share their great photos of the area.
No strangers to breathtaking vistas, Allan and Lee asked (again, via social media) if the people were as nice as the scenery. The local residents employed novel approaches to demonstrate they were worth a visit. For example, local signage began to express the town’s welcoming spirit.
Still, the pair was undecided, so the town turned to YouTube. But rather than have local officials list the town’s attributes on a whiteboard, the residents themselves extolled Coos Bay’s virtues:
In a blog post, Jenkins listed the efforts that wound up bringing he and Hopkins to Coos Bay, including an initial soft sell and good humor. Not only did the pair visit Coos Bay, they shared videos of their experiences, adding even more content that could surface when anybody else considered a stop in the town.
What emerged from Columbia, Maryland—other than the clear sense of pride its residents take in their home—wouldn’t lead me to visit unless a performer I wanted to see was playing at the Merriweather Post Pavilion (and had no plans to stop at any of the concert venues near me). The video also touted a soon-to-open Whole Foods, but I have one of those 20 minutes from my driveway.
To really drive tourism, the town could have done what Coos Bay did with Flickr, opting for Instagram instead, and taking advantage of a clever hashtag. Local signage could have invited Louis-Dreyfus to various spots in town. Local residents could have participated in a similar video, talking up the Columbia’s attributes rather than simply expressing their displeasure over the perceived slight. Given that it’s more than four years since Coos Bay undertook its grass roots campaign to get bring Hopkins and Jenkins to town, they could have jumped on other channels to take advantage of the sudden publicity dropped in their laps by an A-list celebrity. Why not, for example, Vine videos of the town collected on a Tumblr blog? A Facebook group or some other venue for people to share their great memories of visits to Columbia?
Coos Bay’s good humor would have gone a long way, too. Why not an event, like a “Veep” meetup that gets the whole town involved?
Mind you, I’m not dissing Columbia myself. Having never been there, I don’t have an opinion one way or the other. Understanding how social media can influence perceptions, though, would go a long way toward driving tourism in the wake of the golden opportunity Louis-Dreyfus handed the town on a silver platter.
So tell me, Columbia: Why should I visit the next time I’m in Maryland?