The history (and love) of the ‘Virginia is for Lovers’ campaign
Nearly 45 years ago, a local advertising agency gave Virginia a priceless gift–an iconic advertising slogan.
In 1969, the Virginia State Travel Service placed an advertisement in the July issue of Modern Bride magazine featuring a slogan that would later make advertising history: Virginia is for Lovers. Officials at the state’s travel service wanted young adults to be the next generation of Virginia tourists, and Lovers seemed like the perfect theme to entice them.
The first “Virginia is for Lovers” advertisement in Modern Bride, June 1969.
The reason? Love really was all around in the late 1960s. Erich Segal’s Love Story was a #1 New York Times Bestseller, Jacqueline Susann’s novel The Love Machine was a reader favorite, and Woodstock drew over 300,000 young Boomers to celebrate peace, love, and music.
It was a copywriter named Robin McLaughlin of Martin & Woltz Inc.–the Richmond advertising company that would later become The Martin Agency–who coined the famed slogan.
Originally, the iconic phrase included modifiers: “Virginia is for beach lovers” would, for example, accompany an advertisement for Virginia Beach; an ad showcasing the Shenandoah Mountains would read “Virginia is for mountain lovers,” etc. But the agency felt the general “Virginia is for Lovers” was more evocative. They removed the modifiers, and premiered the simplified version in Modern Bride nearly 45 years ago.
“We were, at that time, a local agency,”1 said John Adams, Martin Agency chairman and departing CEO, who has worked at the agency for nearly 40 years. “The opportunity to do something that was useful to our home state was really wonderful.”
On the legacy the slogan has had on the agency, he said only a few individual ad campaigns have made people take serious notice of the agency, ads that helped propel the company’s prestige in the advertising world.2 “The first of those propelling [ads] was the ‘Virginia is for Lovers’ campaign,” Smith said.
(1989 Virginia is for Lovers commercial)
Diane Béchamps, the Vice President of Marketing at the Virginia Tourism Corporation (VTC),3 said, “People just think it’s a fun and cool way of reminding people that vacationing is about the emotional bond” that’s forged. “Love is at the heart of every Virginia vacation,” she said.
According to her, the VTC spends roughly $9 million annually on tourism marketing–eighth most among US states. That marketing earns a hefty return: Béchamps said that, in 2011, tourists spent approximately $20 billion across the Commonwealth, producing $1.3 billion in state and local taxes.4
In 2009, “Virginia is for Lovers” was inducted into the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame, joining other famed advertising initiatives like the Budweiser Clydesdales and the “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there” slogan. Also in that year, Forbes named the phrase one of the top-ten tourism marketing campaigns.
Adams said, “It is a rare example of being able to develop a product that endures over a period of time.” He said the stamina of the “Virginia is for Lovers” campaign is “quite, quite remarkable.”
Even as the slogan approaches a half-century of life, it’s celebrity status still makes it an invaluable commodity to Virginia tourism, one that the VTC has no interest in retiring.
“We would never want to change it because it has enormous brand equity,” Diane Béchamps said. “We would be crazy not to continue using it.”
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Footnotes
- While still based in Richmond, the agency also has offices in New York City. ↩
- He mentioned Wrangler jeans, Mercedes Benz, and Wal-Mart as being other ads that earned the agency attention among leading advertisers. ↩
- Formerly the Virginia State Travel Service. ↩
- Béchamps also said that for every $1 Virginia puts into tourism advertising, the state receives $5 in return. Roughly 207,000 Virginians are employed, in some way, as a result of the Commonwealth’s tourism market. ↩
photos/images courtesy of the Virginia Tourism Corporation
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Nathan Cushing
Nathan Cushing is a writer, journalist, and RVANews Editor.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
If anyone’s interested, this was shot inside the church inside the reconstructed Jamestown Fort, not that you’d be able to tell from the pic. I know because I was there (foreground). Most of the other guys were, like me, from one fraternity at Wm&Mary. “Anne Burras” and her bridesmaid were, I believe, guides from the Jamestown Fort, as was the guy partly in the shadows to the bridesmaid’s left. I went off to get a PhD, specializing in protein structure, now semi-retired, and I’m on the Science Cabinet of the American Chestnut Fdn, whose research farms are in SW VA (Meadowview). JK, behind ‘hing’ in ‘something’, became a principal in a major Detroit lawfirm and sadly succumbed to melanoma several years back. His name is still in the firm’s name. JAG, behind ‘The’, lives on the Eastern Shore, having retired from many years in the US Gov’t’s agricultural sector. In the rear shadows at upper rt, JB has worked tirelessly on economic development in SW VA since graduating, and recently played a leading role in development of the popular ‘Crooked Road’ musical history trail there, as well as the Ralph Stanley Museum. I’ve lost track of Driscoll (we only knew him by his last name), above my left shoulder. The three in the upper left corner were fellow fraternity guys who I’ve largely lost track of but whose whereabouts are known. The three in the center not already mentioned were on day passes from Eastern State. I got the lead role because at that time there were only about three guys with beards and I was the first to answer the phone. The photo shoot was a cold day in Nov, and it took all day to produce that shot. The ad ran in Modern Bride – the March issue IIRC. If only we’d thought to ask for residuals.
John, that is very cool info!
As an update to the above, I have just learned that not only is JK’s name as noted above still part still part of the Detroit law firm of Feiger, Fieger, Kenney and Harrington. 14yrs after his death, but also that their new building was dedicated in his memory.
Meanwhile, since the above and in my retirement I am restoring a Victorian steel baron’s mansion (now known as Schwixon) and share in an all-but-awarded patent in rapid identification of bacterial species underlying sepsis. JB continues his tireless efforts on economic improvement in SW VA.