"Hey Kids, Who Wants To Go To Iraq?"

It's that time of year in Chicago when you see all the billboards and airport dioramas that advertise locales for us to visit with our families. There is Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky and Berwyn, IL. Yes, everyone is trying to get our tourism dollar. So, I thought it only fitting that I find at least one tourism campaign to write about this Summer.

[Iraq Minister of Tourism Pictured Above, Seriously.]
From the NY Times today, comes a story about the Iraqi Board of Tourism. Now, I've worked on some challenging products that you struggle to find a differentiating value proposition and in addition, once you find that needle in a haystack, aligning it with consumer need (either overt or manufactured) is harder than eating a Bomb Pop on a 100 degree day. But, could you imagine having to create a tourism campaign for the country of Iraq, now?

As a side note discussed in the article, the Arabic word for "advertising" translates to "propaganda."

Even more interesting, the Tourism board held a user-generated contest to choose a winner of the Iraqi tourism poster contest. Do they have Illustrator and Photoshop in Iraq? Cool. One of the contestants chose to focus on the caves in Iraq as the site tourists would like to see. He proudly noted that there are 1,000 caves in Iraq.

I'm sure that Iraq is a very beautiful country in some regards and I mean no disrespect to the country we are losing our young soldiers to defend, but I had to comment on the "marketing challenge" of creating tourism demand for a place that is in the midst of a war.

If you were able to win this business and develop a campaign that encouraged people to visit Iraq during a war. You would win every new business pitch you ever had the pleasure of being a part of.

But, if I have piqued your interest and you'd like to take a trip. Here ya go:  http://www.tourismkurdistan.com/