So I’ve been loosely following the "Real Winter" story/project that the Central Oregon Visitors Association has been promoting; it started with this story in Sunday’s Bulletin, and there was a bit on KTVZ last night about it. The gist of it is, it’s a new ad campaign promoting winter tourism for Central Oregon (obviously), and it’s taken the form of two mock movie trailers (each 30 seconds long) that will be shown on TV spots throughout the Portland market.

I’ve watched both the trailers, and I have to say they’re technically well-done: quality filmwork and editing, soundtrack and voice-over. They look like movie trailers, and even though they’re a bit cheesy—and I was (privately) harsh on them at first—I think COVA has put the effort into producing a pretty good quality piece.

That having been said, however, I read this in the Bulletin (empahsis mine):

“It’s based upon contemporary movie trailers,” said Alana Audette, COVA’s president and CEO. “The challenge is how to convey the myriad of things that this region has to offer. The movie trailer is a stroke of brilliance because it allows us to tell the Central Oregon (winter) experience in a 30-second sound bite.”

…and the warning bells started sounding off.

In general, when the marketers start telling me how brilliant they are and fall over themselves trying to pat themselves on the back, I am immediately turned off, and start wondering just what’s wrong with their campaign.

Maybe I’m just cynical. What do the rest of you think?

Let me be clear, though, in saying that the campaign on its own does look like a good one, it’s eye-catching and better than a lot of local marketing efforts I’ve seen (I’m thinking in particular of the really bad faux-viral video failure of a year and a half ago). I think just beyond TV spots and newspaper ads and a single website, though, they need to upload this video to YouTube immediately, and look at MySpace TV, and all other such sites for viral marketing opportunities. Like blogs (heh).