Snow, snow go away was probably the least profane thing a commuter trapped in falling snow and 13 hours of gridlock surrounding Washington could say Wednesday night. But Florida's tourism officials say keep it coming.
Winter is always high marketing season for the Sunshine State, prime time to lure those northerners on the verge of impaling themselves on a snow shovel to strip off their itchy wool and burn their pasty skin amid the swaying palm trees on our beaches.
But this year's miserable weather is producing some extreme moments of schadenfreude among our tourism industry folks too big to pass up.
Earlier this week, as the snow began in New York's Times Square, the Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau unveiled four blocks of ice holding polka dot bikinis and brightly colored swim trunks. The pitch: "Defrost your swimsuit" in Fort Lauderdale.
"We do like to see the weather in other areas. We say 'Ha, ha I'm going to the beach and it's 22 degrees' " where you are, said Francine Mason, the bureau's spokeswoman and a former New Yorker who sought refuge in the sun. "I have some heart; we don't want them stuck on the road."
When a freak of weather produced snow in all 49 states — yes Hawaii, too — except Florida a couple weeks ago, the Palm Beach County Convention and Visitors Bureau produced a 10-second video called Not a Snowplow in Sight. It featured the sounds and sights of the ocean's rippling green-blue water.
The latest pitch comes from the state's public-private partnership, known as Visit Florida, which produced a spoof of a news release featuring an incognito Punxsutawney Phil, the famous groundhog who burrows up from a hole and predicts, for millions of Americans, when winter will end, depending on whether he sees his shadow. According to the social media campaign, Phil had fled Pennsylvania for Florida and can be seen golfing, kayaking and, curiously, being held in the air by a shirtless man at a St. Petersburg resort.
It appears as though Phil is not willing to risk seeing his shadow Feb. 2 and does not plan to return home for Groundhog Day.
Tourism officials say there is a direct correlation between the weather up north and plans to visit a warm destination. The visitors bureau staff in Fort Lauderdale is so convinced of the connection that its uses the temperature to trigger media buys. When the mercury dips to 32 degrees in the Northeast, out come print, television and radio spots.
For those who can't get to Florida right away, the bureau features a live Webcam, trained on the beach.
"If that goes down, I can't tell you the number of calls we get," Mason said.
Perhaps that's what commuters stuck in the car in D.C. were watching on their iPhones
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