The City of Boston will again extend its year-old pandemic recovery tourism campaign, this time with about $1.5 million in various funding sources and a new set of ads that play on the idea of how a typical Boston accent sounds.
The campaign, launched as a pilot program last year, had the dual purpose of steering tourist spending toward businesses in the city's diverse neighborhoods and changing perceptions about Boston, given its history of pervasive racism and economic exclusion.
"This campaign is part of our effort to create and tell the story of a Boston for everyone, whether your family dates back six generations here, whether you are new to this country — or city — or whether you haven't yet had the chance to come and visit, we're here, we're welcome and we're ready to embrace you," Wu said.
All Inclusive Boston, she said, drove about 4,000 new visitors to the city last year even as pandemic caseloads surged and fell with the circulation of new COVID-19 variants.
"As we are investing in telling the story of Boston, we are investing in Boston and the diversity of our city," the mayor added, pointing to the team responsible for the effort. "Eighty-four percent of the contractors and sub-contractors involved with this effort are women-owned businesses, or businesses owned by people of color."
Organizers with the ad campaign debuted a snippet of the new commercials Monday. It showed Bostonians of various backgrounds repeating the phrase "this is my Boston accent" in several languages and tones from popular spots across the city.
Wu, who faced a streak of nativist political opposition while campaigning for the mayoralty, said she had "absolutely no involvement" in the campaign beyond greenlighting the funding needed for its extension.
Segun Idowu, chief of economic opportunity and inclusion under Wu, said as a Black person growing up in the city, the ad campaign struck a personal chord.
"The thing you'll always hear in communities of color is that we never see ourselves represented in how we market our city," he said Monday. "My greatest appreciation is that, maybe now, people will stop asking us to say 'park the car on the Harvard yard,'" he joked.
Asked how effective the campaign could be while political observers watch Boston's long-revered and white-dominated groups such as public safety workers and North End restaurant owners oppose some of her administration's biggest policy moves to date, Wu expressed optimism that it would achieve the long-term goal of changing people's associations with the city.
"To see a campaign here that really leans into the fact that we all have a voice and we all need to be heard ... it speaks not only to those outside our city to reintroduce and tell the story of Boston, but it speaks to our Boston residents, too, that we're all a part of that story and we have been," Wu said. "I think we're in a moment of necessity to emphasize that."
The campaign spans three mayoral administrations. Crafted under former mayor Marty Walsh, All Inclusive Boston officially launched under former acting mayor Kim Janey as a pilot program.
The pilot was first extended last November.
Watch: Boston expands ‘All Inclusive’ campaign
