Ads pushing tourism take an odd turn

For the last several years, the big problem for the Illinois Bureau of Tourism, as well as similar offices in several nearby states, has been trying to pull focus from the incredibly well-done "Pure Michigan" tourism campaign, which continues to do a wonderful job of selling Michigan in a very emotional way.

The tourism bureau and its ad agency JWT/Chicago haven't, to date, come up with a campaign that comes close to matching the power of "Pure Michigan." The newest Illinois tourism campaign set to break today isn't the equal of the Michigan work, either. But it probably will leave people scratching their heads, which may not be an altogether bad thing. At least if people are curious, they may be compelled to explore further what Illinois has to offer tourists, and that's half the battle right there.

The campaign is pegged to the newly coined word "fallfillment," which we're not wild about. Still, it does make clear this is a seasonal tourism ad campaign with the new tagline, "Fall. It's more fallfilling in Illinois." And there's a new Web site for the campaign at www.fallfillment.com.

Just how "fallfilling" Illinois may be is up to tourists to discover for themselves, but the ad campaign itself is really more surreal than anything else. How else to describe 5-second TV commercials like one that shows dolphins jumping over an autumn-leaves-strewn road or another in which a statue of Abe Lincoln attempts to pluck apples from a tree. If those executions don't strike viewers as odd enough, maybe Herman Munster sipping wine from a goblet will do the trick.

Weird and attention-grabbing though the TV spots may be, it's hard to tell exactly what tourist destinations in Illinois the ad imagery is promoting. We finally realized the dolphins are tied to the Shedd Aquarium, while we had to ask Jan Kostner, deputy director of the Illinois Bureau of Tourism, about the Munster character, who is part of a Six Flags Great America attraction. All of the fallfillment TV spots are in bright color, however, which is an improvement over previous black-and-white Illinois tourism commercials that, to us, always seemed a bit glum.