Tourism touts star gazing

Back in the good old days your family would all pack into your station wagon/mini van/camper truck and take a trip out into the woods for some camping. Inevitably when you were bored at night without TV to keep you company you would look up to the heavens and see all the twinkling stars. At that point your father would most likely attempt to act like he knew which one the big dipper was and you didn't have the knowledge to question his random finger pointing.

Well it seems that provinces and states are using a different kind of star gazing to try and attract tourists nowadays.

Today the province of British Columbia unveiled their new Tourism BC 30 second ad and it appears they are stealing a page out of the guvernator's book by flashing celebrities of BC heritage at people.



Now fortunately British Columbia is in fact one of the most beautiful places on earth and some of the footage they use in the commercial shows this natural beauty off quite well. The question is, does the fact that famous people come from BC have any relevance on making people travel to my wonderful province. Now, the current generation of people are certainly celeb-obsessed and maybe the appearance of some well known stars will help to peak this younger generations interest in the west coast, but I wonder if it could have been made just as effective by having real people that experienced it for the first time explaining what BC was like to them. I'm sure you could have found plenty of tourists that would say nice things about the province. I think the ad will be very successful anyways because it is done quite tastefully and shows off a little portion of what BC has to offer.

Anyways, here is the California video, which clearly was successful because it ran for a long time and a second version of it came out after the first to build on the success of the initial launch.



Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting ability still awes me to this day. He just hits his line with such poise and natural talent. I mean, without him movies like Twins and Commando wouldn't have been such instant classics.

So what will BC follow California into next, maybe this.