Washington State Tourist Slogan

[NoName]

In my ongoing state tourist slogan series, Washington state has just come up with its new slogan:
http://www.komotv.com/stories/42395.htm
(via soundpolitics.com)

SEATTLE - Have you heard the new tourism slogan for Washington state?
It's "SayWA."

We ran it by tourist Marcy Heim. "You mean like say what? Come to Seattle? Say What? Like that?" she asked.

No, not say WHAT.

It's pronounced "wah" as in, say Washington. "Oh, say Waaaah," she said.

"We get it."

Do you?

The new campaign pitches "wah" as the sound you'll make when you see our state's majestic mountains, rugged coastline and glorious sunsets.

"Waaah. In Washingtonian, this means wow," the campaign says. Local visitor bureaus, chambers, marketing firms and businesses signed off on the slogan, seeing it as a simple, catchy phrase that provokes thought. [...]

"It's just not that catchy," said Sarah Owens of Seattle as she led a couple of Irish tourists through Pike Place Market, one of the state's premier attractions. "Who makes these decisions? Washington's spectacular. It doesn't need a slogan."

The slogan, 18 months in development, is designed to promote Washington's numerous tourist attractions, from hiking in the Olympic Mountains to visiting wine country to wind-surfing in the Columbia River Gorge. A replacement for "Experience Washington," it was chosen with a lot of market research and the input of a 32-member "brand development task force," which included Chamber of Commerce directors, tourism officials and business representatives from around the state. Beginning this spring, a $442,000 campaign will put "SayWA" advertisments into travel magazines and television programs.

"SayWA is a distillation of the sense of wonder that comes with discovery," the tourism office's Web site suggests. "It describes the moment when an experience becomes emotional. Where the traveler is no longer an observer, but a participant. The SayWA moment." [...]
"Thirty-five years ago I smoked dope and probably could have come up with something like that," said Darrell Bryan, general manager of Victoria Clipper, the largest tour operator in the Northwest. "To me, it's better to have no slogan than to come up with something like that. There's too much scratching the head about 'What does that mean?"'