Cases studies

Philadelphia Murals Promotion 2009: How to increase consumer media exposure through a niche cultural approach.

• Agencies : Interface Tourism France
• Services : Consumer Promotion - Public Relations - Representation

Brief

Philadelphia has positioned itself as a cultural tourism destination and wants now to highlight its artistic attractions to ensure its recognition as an authentic city of culture. Through this cultural approach, Philadelphia is able to communicate outside the tourism media and to obtain interest from culture, arts and lifestyle media.

To this end and to seduce important press contacts, it was vital to create “news” and “events” linking Philadelphia and France.

Tactics

On a very small budget, Interface Tourism decided to promote the Murals Tradition of Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Mural Arts Program (MAP) is on the one hand artistic (more than 3000 works of art have been created on huge walls throughout the city) but it is also a social program (although an artist designs mural, it’s people who live in the city who actually do the painting).

Creation of an original international artistic partnership to highlight a specific theme.

•  A meeting was held with the Cultural Director of the American Embassy to see how we could connect the murals to the Embassy’s projects and its mission in France and how to introduce the MAP to France.
• It was quickly decided to invite certain French City officials to the meeting (Bagnolet, Villiers-le-Bel, Bondy) as well as the State cultural association in charge of international cultural exchanges, “Cultures France”. The Embassy decided to make a budget available as did “Cultures France” to enable PHL artists from MAP to visit France, to meet the population of the 3 French cities, to create a design a mural for them to paint and then to teach them how to do it.
• Prior to the creation of the murals in the French cities, Interface Tourism organized a press trip in June 2009 for French City delegates and for “Liberation” a national newspaper with a daily print run of some 130,456 copies), www.next-liberation.com (a website which has some 1,930,593 visitors), “Ulysse” (a bi-monthly cultural and travel magazine – 53,235 copies), “Le Point” (a weekly news magazine – 410,000 copies), “Beaux Arts” and “Le Monde” (a national newspaper with a daily print run of some 340,131 copies). The program included a meeting with the MAP team, artists, “communities”, local inhabitants, city officials and of course a visit to the murals (murals just beginning, people working on murals, murals being inaugurated etc.)
•  A press release on the murals was sent to more than 2,000 journalists and 3,000 trade contacts.

Result

• Coverage from the press trip = 2,000,000 €. Beautiful articles that encouraged French Tour Operators to systematically integrate the pictures of different murals into their tour programs which put across a very trendy and highly positive image of Philadelphia.
• An Opening Celebration of 3 of the most beautiful murals in September 2009 in each of the 3 French cities with the presence of the new American Ambassador to France, City Hall officials, the local people who actually painted the murals and their families and press contacts.
• 2 French artists will go to PHL to work with local people there and paint a mural (the press will cover the event)
• The Embassy and “Culture France” decided to allocate new budgets to continue with this partnership in France.