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Tom Musbach, PlanetOut Network
A U.S. city known for its history, Philadelphia, has made history again by being the first to court GLBT tourism with a targeted television commercial.
Tourism officials in the City of Brotherly Love unveiled the ad on Wednesday as part of a $1.7 million campaign to attract families as well as multicultural and gay travelers.
The 30-second, gay-themed spot will air on channels such as Bravo, MTV, VH1 and Style in Comcast cable markets, the Associated Press reports.
Meryl Levitz, president and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp., which sponsored the ad, said the campaign is meant to stress that the city is a "gay-friendly destination."
In the ad, a young man in colonial dress arranges to meet his "beloved" outside Independence Hall, a popular historical landmark in Philadelphia. As he waits outside and horse-drawn carriages pass, a young maiden approaches and tries unsuccessfully to catch his eye. A moment later, a handsome man arrives, and they walk away together.
The final words of the voice-over say, "Come to Philadelphia. Get your history straight, and your nightlife gay."
The spot represents the first time a U.S. city has sought to attract gay travelers through television advertising, according to the Commercial Closet, a nonprofit site that tracks portrayals of GLBT people in mainstream ads.
Michael Wilke, executive director of the Commercial Closet whose monthly column also appears on Gay.com and PlanetOut.com, added that the ad is just the second television spot from a major company that is not gay-owned to expressly target GLBT consumers. (Orbitz was the first, last year.)
"Despite the large number of companies who've run gay-themed ads, they nearly never intend to sell to gay people directly," Wilke told the PlanetOut Network. "However, more will definitely come, soon as comfort continues to grow with the gay marketplace, and now that Logo is set to launch."
Logo, a new cable network backed by Viacom and aimed at GLBT viewers, will debut in February 2005, the company announced last week.
John Sonego, director of programs and communications for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), called the ad "brilliant and subversive": "brilliant because it creatively establishes the reality that gay people have been an intrinsic part of American life from the beginning, and subversive because it turns the radical right's appropriation of American symbols on its head."
"As Americans, gay people have just as much right to share in the symbolism of the Liberty Bell and the American flag as they do -- and this is the first ad campaign that sends that message loud and clear," he said.
"Always forgive your enemies...nothing annoys them quite so much." Oscar Wilde
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