Less Midwest nice and more Chicago swagger.
That’s what the city’s tourism marketing agency is going for in its new $4 million advertising campaign, unveiled Thursday at Wintrust Arena.
The slogan: “Never Done. Never Outdone.”
“It ushers in a new era of Chicago swagger. … It’s a declaration that Chicago is ready to elevate, but also dominate,” said Choose Chicago President and CEO Kristen Reynolds, having spent a little over a month on the job after the last decade as CEO of New York’s Discover Long Island.
Introduced as the city gets set to host the U.S. Travel Association’s IPW trade show, the campaign aims to boost visitor numbers to the city not yet back up to pre-pandemic levels.
“We talk less, dream bigger and never stop pushing. We’ve changed the course of rivers and the course of history,” Grammy-winning poet and Chicagoan J. Ivy declares in the campaign video, as scenes of everyday Chicago life unfold.
There are locals cheering on the city’s various sports teams, neighborhood festivals, plenty of lakefront shots and lots and lots of food sizzling in pans.
“This new campaign is honest, it’s authentic. It represents our city in its fullness,” said Mayor Brandon Johnson, one of the speakers at Thursday’s event.
Choose Chicago has gone through considerable turmoil in recent years. The pandemic led to layoffs and pay cuts for its staff, but its annual budget of about $33 million is now just above its level in 2019, before the COVID-19 onset.
It took 1½ years to develop the campaign, and it included some 300 “community and industry listening sessions, focus groups, sentiment surveys, social listening research, and brand showcases,” according to Choose Chicago.
“We were really sick and tired of people telling us who we are, shaping perceptions, storytelling and stereotypes,” said Lisa Nucci, the agency’s chief marketing officer. “We wanted our brand to tell the world who we really are, not just why they should come here.”
The marketing campaign will appear in the city, as well as in several other larger American cities, and internationally — including the United Kingdom, Japan, Mexico and Brazil.
The city has received no shortage of national and international attention in recent months — as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“When people are looking at it from a global perspective, they’re looking at it and understanding that this is not a city problem. This is a political problem, and we are not alone in that fight. Chicago has a lot to offer, and the 55 million visitors who came last year, I think, agree with me,” Reynolds said.