Too cuddly for New Yorkers

The “With Love, Philly XOXO”  campaign that popped up in New York’s Penn Station probably doesn’t have the necessary edge to prompt city dwellers to hop a train south.

 

 

The “With Love, Philly XOXO” campaign has started spreadin’ the news to New York’s Penn Station. Huge billboards beckoning folks to visit Philadelphia are up with plans for taxicabs to follow.

If I still lived in New York, I would find these ads annoying as I hurried to pick up some food or buy a ticket before catching a train.

A tourism message that ends with the symbol for hugs and kisses might also be seen as, to borrow from a recent Pennsylvania governor, a bit wussy to New Yorkers.

Then again, The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation probably knows that already and is attempting to get tourists to forgidabout Manhattan and hop a southbound train to 30th Street Station.

The success of the “I Love New York” campaign — with the big red heart on t-shirts that became a worldwide phenomenon — could be spurring Philly officials to use “love” as a lure.

Much of the With Love, Philly campaign is creative such as the marvelously inclusive ad filmed in Love Park that ends with Betsy Ross and Ben Franklin in a lip lock. Sprinkled among numerous straight couples kissing are a single man hugging himself, a woman and her dog smooching and Heather with her two mommies. Holla!

Philly has gained the reputation among New Yorkers as a cool place (not to mention more affordable). But poster ads with cutesy sayings signed with Gossip Girl X’s and O’s could blow it.

Give New Yorkers something a lot more funky and edgy if you want non-converts to spend time in The City of Brotherly Love.