Detroit peddles 'Comeback City' ads to curious convention planners

Tom Walsh: Detroit peddles 'Comeback City' ads to curious convention planners

How do you market a bankrupt city?

Bill Bohde and 11 colleagues from the Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau, Cobo Center and regional partners gave it their best shot a week ago in Atlanta at the American Society of Association Executives annual meeting and expo.

“We sure had a great deal of interest and traffic at our booth,” said Bohde, the bureau’s senior vice president, sales and marketing. “There were a lot of questions about the bankruptcy situation, a tremendous amount of buzz.”

“Sometimes,” he added, “bad publicity is better than none.”
Fortuitously, Detroit’s convention pitch team went to the 2013 ASAE event, often called the Super Bowl of trade shows, with a brand new marketing campaign to unveil — dubbed “Detroit, America’s Great Comeback City.”

Back in early May, when DMCVB officials tapped SMZ Advertising of Troy to produce print and video ads touting the region, they didn’t know Detroit would file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy on July 18 — just two weeks before the big shindig Aug. 3-6 in Atlanta.

Yikes! Suddenly the pressure was on — and not just because the Atlanta meeting of 5,000 of the nation’s meeting planners and other attendees was looming. Detroit itself is slated to host the ASAE’s big show in 2015, which assured that the CVB team would be peppered with bankruptcy-worry questions....

http://www.freep.com/article/2013081...-Comeback-City