Tacoma: Can't get a break
In the Don't-Worry-So-Much Department, the people of Tacoma, Wash., are worried they have a bad rep. The police chief recently shot his wife, then himself, in front of thier children at a shopping center. The Washington D.C. sniper comes from Tacoma. Ted Bundy. The list goes on....
I recently received an email, following the police chief's murder-suicide, asking "What is it with Tacoma?" In the words of the old Olympia Beer ad: "It's the water, and a lot more." What it is: Tacoma is one of the many fraying edges of American civilization. Here's a sample of why this is true, a suggestion that, instead of looking the problems in the face, keep selling the marketing message that Tacoma is good, in other words, style over substance:
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at May 12, 2003 07:00 AM | TrackBack
Stewart suggests Tacoma folks not get too defensive.
"My advice would be not to defend but to promote what you've done and continue to sell hard what you've done," he said.
Similar advice is offered by Ted Levine, chairman and founder of Development Counsellors International. The New York City firm crafted the "America's No. 1 Wired City" campaign that hailed Tacoma's Internet-friendly municipal infrastructure.
"News moves very fast, and people forget things very fast unless enormous attention is called to them," Levine said. "And that's exactly the case with this police chief thing.
"What you do is you say good things, and that particular story will die out with extraordinary speed," he said. "The news is pretty full of other things pretty fast."
People outside the Northwest who heard about the Brame case felt sad for his wife and children, Levine said. The city was far less important.
"I don't think the notion of Tacoma got across. I think the notion of a police chief being involved did," he said.
"It's terrible. But it has nothing to do with the museum and nothing to do with the university and nothing to do with the wired city," he said. "It ain't enough to turn the tide, even in Tacoma."