SC 'So Gay' Ads Surprised Officials
The ad campaign touting South Carolina as “So Gay” in hopes of attracting LGBTQ tourists made the state tourism agency nervous enough. But now, a pile of emails has surfaced from the SC Parks, Recreation and Tourism Department showing the ads were approved by a just one employee.
“I’m praying this little story doesn’t jump the pond, especially as the late summer slow news cycle sets in,” wrote Marion Edmonds, the spokesman for the tourism department, in an email to a colleague. “Let’s hope that it doesn’t get picked up by some SC tourist and brought back. It would be a classic case of a picture doing the damage of a thousand words.”
However, the hopes Edmond had in his July 3 e-mail went down the tubes as the story about SC’s “So Gay” advertisements in the London Underground and the reactions that followed made national news in early July.
A Freedom of Information request uncovered a pile of emails and documents dating back to 2004. The documents allege an agency employee decided to spend a little under five thousand dollars on a campaign at London Pride, a gay event, to draw LGBTQ tourists to the state.
The documents reveal the agency’s struggle to figure out why the ads were running, where the funding was approved, and hopes that the story would just blow over without attracting any major media attention.
Rand Romaine, the former Parks, Recreation and Tourism Departments sales manager approved the ad proofs in an email back in may that simply read, “It’s good to go.”
State officials promptly reneged on the ad campaign as soon as it was made public for fear the state would lose business and tax payers’ trust by publicly supporting LGBTQ tourism. The “So Gay” ads also featured other major American destinations including Atlanta, Boston and New Orleans. Romaine resigned on July 11.
"I saw a sales opportunity and reacted," Romaine wrote.
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