Our self-promoting mayor

from w
A video depicting Geelong as a place of zombies with the colourful clown of a mayor riding into town to change things is just one more self-promotion for Darryn Lyons. The Geelong Advertiser writer certainly thinks so.  Geelong has many things going for it - empty shops do not tell the whole story. In the marketing video which cost nearly $40,000 there's no references to our tertiary institutions, our senior citizens, and that Geelong as a safe place to raise a family, and our many schools. Life is not the fluff that is depicted in the video  - mainly of young adults in restaurants and dancing. Go to http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/news/opinion/editorial-zombie-imagery-an-insult-to-us-all/story-fnjuhr1j-1227115152035  and http://www.geelongreinvented.com.au/

THE new tourism video will ignite a firestorm of debate.

With its images of the people of Geelong as zombies in “Sleepy Hollow” until the arrival of Mayor Darryn Lyons, many will be wondering “what was that all about’’.

Some will say this tourism video has “cut through’’, will be well watched and generate plenty of hits online, and that makes it a success.

Well, we disagree. Generating hits is not the measure of success for a tourism video.

Getting people to visit here will be the definition of its success.

And after seeing that video it is hard to see how it can be seen as anything but a vehicle to promote Mayor Darryn Lyons.

ZOMBIES APPEAR IN TOURISM VIDEO
But even more concerning is that this video portrays Geelong prior to the arrival of Mayor Lyons as a defeated, broken city where we, as citizens, were the living dead.

That is wrong. That is demeaning. That is an insult to every person in this city, to the 200,000 plus people who call this city home.

We are not zombies.