BP is refusing to give Florida more money for advertising. The $25 million the company gave the state in June runs out this weekend. Sunday, the commercials promoting Florida’s clean beaches will be pulled. Governor Charlie Crist had asked for 50 million dollars to run ads through the summer.
On 7/12, BP sent him a refusal letter. In it BP questions the effectiveness of spending money promoting the entire state, and encourages area advertising. Governor Crist isn’t giving up, reports WINK-TV Ft. Myers. “We are responding to their letter, trying to force them to do the right thing. Like they say in their commercials, ‘do the right thing.’ Well the right thing would be to give us the opportunity to market our state.”
Visit Florida, the state’s tourism agency, is digging into its own pockets to get the Open For Business messages to travelers. But Visit Florida says it’s a 10 million dollar a week job… and the agency doesn’t have that kind of cash.
Chris Thompson is the CEO of Visit Florida, “We are just going to have to get creative.”
While BP is cutting off the cash flow to help promote Florida, the oil giant is cutting no corners in its own efforts to improve its tarnished image; full page newspaper ads, TV commercials, and internet marketing are costing the company millions.
RBR-TVBR observation: Well, certainly a “creative” avenue would be for the state of Florida to sue BP (get in line) over lost tourism revenue from this disaster. Hopefully it won’t have to come to that, as it appears the fix may have been for this mess.
