Tourism News
Terry’s Top 10: Slogans for Myrtle Beach
By Terry Massey
You’ve probably noticed that extra penny per dollar you’ve been spending in additional sales tax inside the Myrtle Beach city limits for the past year or so.
If it hasn’t hit you in the wallet, it’s at least hit you in the piggy bank. All those pennies are being used specifically to market Myrtle Beach as a vacation destination with an advertising campaign that will draw tourists to town in droves.
Yet the best slogan we’ve been able to come up with is “Visit Myrtle Beach.” Really? I understand it’s short, simple and to the point, sorta like “Drink Coke”, but where’s the wow factor? Surely all those pennies can create a better tourist trap.
So in an effort to help pack more folks into our hotels, restaurants and attractions this summer, I’ve brainstormed a few ideas or 10 into this week’s top 10 list. Feel free to add your own ads in the comments box below. The winner gets a penny for their thoughts:
10) “Try the New and Improved Myrtle Beach – now with 50 percent more Myrtle.” What exactly is Myrtle and how do we increase the capacity of it? Doesn’t matter. People love added value even if they don’t know what it is or need it, like the people who snap up a great deal on kitty litter but don’t have a cat. Except in this case they are snapping up our Myrtle and we’ve got plenty to spare and share – if we ever figure out what and where it is.
9) “Myrtle Beach – Just a Short Drive from the Big City of Aynor” – Who cares about truth in advertising. Small-town charm is in these days, and what better way to cash in on the fad than to hype the fine folks in Hoe-Down Town as the city-slickers and present Myrtle Beach as the off-the-beaten path alternative, the escape from those bright red lights (both of them) and the morning traffic jams around the Bojangles.
8) “Stay Away From Myrtle Beach!” – Sure, it sounds rude at first, but hear me out. Nothing makes people want to do something more than being told not to do it. Did you ever have any desire to run with scissors as a child until your mom told you not do it? Or try to air condition the whole neighborhood until your dad told you to shut the door? It’s called reverse psychology. I can hear all those tourists out in TV land now: “Nobody’s gonna tell me I can’t go to Myrtle Beach.”
7) “Myrtle Beach – If Nautical Nonsense be Something You Wish” – Ring a bell? That’s because it is lifted from a line in the “SpongeBob SquarePants” song. Studies show that household decision in modern families are increasingly being made by children (or as my mom would call them, “spoiled brats”). If we could get the yellow fellow on board as a spokessponge (or maybe Mr. Krabbs if we’re on a tight budget), maybe change the name of the town to Bikini Bottom, we’d be up to our knees in rugrats.
6) “Myrtle Beach – Where it’s Always Sunny and Only Rains Money” – So what if it isn’t true, it rhymes. So if some of the tourists just happen to believe that, A) It never rains here and, B) When it does, cash falls from the sky like a gift from God, so be it. We might even draw in enough visitors that we can drop money on the beach from those banner planes, as long as it doesn’t crash with our stash of cash (I’m a poet and don’t even realize the fact that I am one).
5) “You Can’t Afford Not To Go To Myrtle Beach” – With the current economic crunch, people are looking for deals to escape this summer. Five years ago they might have gone on a Caribbean cruise, this summer it’s “Where can we go on a tank of gas?” By packaging discounted hotel rooms and deals on meals and entertainment, we can easily make up for any losses with volume, volume, volume, sort of like Wal-Mart Beach. We could even post senior-citizen greeters at the city limits.
4) You Can’t Afford To Go To Myrtle Beach” – I know it’s the opposite of the last slogan, but check it out. Just as there’s a market for Wal-Mart, there’s also one for Saks Fifth Avenue – less volume, more cash per capita, or in this case per tourista. The upper-crust is looking for exclusivity in their vacation destination, someplace their friends will have to Google to find out about. If we can out-snob Charleston and Hilton Head we’ll have more Beamers in town than you can shake your cuff links at.
3) “Myrtle Beach – Martha’s Vineyard’s Redneck Cousin.” Everybody has one distant relative that “ain’t right” – or in my case not just one and not so distant. You know, the ones that show up to the family reunion with a cooler full of PBR and some fireworks for the young-uns to shoot at each other. Playing the uncultured card is very appealing to some, very Faulkner-esque. How do you think those old hillbilly towns in the mountains have become artsy hippie havens? Billing our town as the illiterate alternative to the playground for the rich and famous can make us more richer and more famouser, and you can quote me on that.
2) “Myrtle Beach – Our Only Oil Spill is SPF 30, not 10W30.” It’s not nice to take advantage of an environmental disaster to lure in tourists, but the Gulf Coast beaches are already accusing East Coast cities of using guerrilla-marketing tactics in the wake of the BP spill to scare folks to the pristine waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Better to go guerrilla than vanilla (rhyming game again).
1) “Please Come to Myrtle Beach” – If none of the first nine borderline-unethical marketing campaigns work, we can always try the honest approach. No catchy jingles, no rhyming games, just a straight-forward invitation. It sends the message “We don’t have to sell you on Myrtle Beach, it sells itself” and show pictures (not the color-enhanced postcard kind, but actual undoctered photos) of everything we have to offer, from the beaches to shopping to hotels to nightlife – a lot like “Visit Myrtle Beach.” It might not be the kind of aggressive marketing that brings in the big crowds, but tourists, like pennies, add up.
