The City of San Francisco, California, has launched its first-ever video advertising campaign in an effort to lure tourists back after years of widespread reporting of its problems with crime, homelessness, and urban decay.
The ad, described by the San Francisco Chronicle as part of a “massive $6 million ad campaign,” shows people enjoying various landmarks around the city, including Union Square, which has been plagued by store closings:
The Chronicle adds:
The ads will appear in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston and Houston markets, running through Oct. 22. The campaign will also include digital advertising in Australia, India, the Asian Pacific region, Europe, Canada and Mexico. And a U.S. travel giveaway contest featuring five local experiences will be held in the coming months. It’s expected to reach 193 million people.
The campaign follows a partial recovery in tourism last year, with spending more than doubling compared with 2021, to $7.4 billion. Major conferences and events, like Dreamforce and the Outside Lands music festival, returned in full force. But a slew of high-profile crime incidents this year and a string of retail closures in the tourist-heavy Powell Street area have dampened the city’s image as the busy summer travel season arrives.
Downtown San Francisco has experienced the slowest pandemic recovery of any major U.S. city.
An aerial view shows a statue of Eureka, part of the Pioneer Monument, standinb above squares painted on the ground to encourage homeless people to keep to social distancing at a city-sanctioned homeless encampment across from City Hall in San Francisco, California, on May 22, 2020, amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Josh Edelson / AFP) (Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)
A recent study of cell phone data activity recovery showed that San Francisco was dead last among 62 American cities studied.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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