Tourism org uses bikes to sell Portland

Travel Portland, our city’s official tourism and marketing arm, has debuted a new video that highlights bicycling. The goal of the video (watch it below) is to entice tourists to come here by showing them how bicycling is such a large part of our local culture.

The video features copywriter and illustrator Alexander Barrett, who opens the 41 second ad with, “As one of the country’s most bikeable cities, Portland has a ridiculous amount of bikes.” He then goes through a bunch of different bike types including a tall bike, a cargo bike, and even the “Pedal Powered Talk Show” bike built by Portland-based Metrofiets and piloted by show host Boaz Frankel. Check it out:

According to Courtney Ries, consumer marketing manager for Travel Portland, the video is one of 25 similar spots that make up their off-season winter campaign which is aimed at potential visitors from the Seattle and Vancouver, BC markets. The video was created by Wieden + Kennedy. Other topics of the videos include beer, beards, foot carts, and so on. In another nod to biking, Barrett mentions the naked bike ride in the “Alternative Sports” video and handmade bikes get mentioned in one of their TV ads.

Ries says Travel Portland is promoting the videos through their various social media channels.

Using bicycles to sell Portland is nothing is new to Travel Portland. In 2009, they gave the City of Portland their top tourism promotion award for its work in “creating and sustaining a Platinum-level Bicycle Friendly Community.” Travel Portland has also been sending staff members to the National Bike Summit every year since 2007.