Boston Invites Visitors With 'All-Inclusive' Campaign

The City of Boston is using money received through the federal CARES Act to launch what it calls a first-of-its kind tourism and COVID-relief campaign to help minority businesses. 

It is the largest single advertising campaign funded by the city and the largest ever awarded to exclusively Black and minority-owned businesses, including Proverb, the agency behind the creative work.

The “All Inclusive” initiative serves as a platform to raise awareness and encourage visitors to Black and minority communities, such as Chinatown, Roxbury and Jamaica Plain. The effort highlights local businesses, supported with creative messaging that features real people, in real situations and real locations to collectively reflect the area’s diversity.

“We want visitors to see Boston as the diverse, welcoming, and vibrant city we know it can be, but isn’t always portrayed in popular media,” says Daren Bascome, founder and managing director of Proverb. “This campaign serves as a promise about what is possible when we tell a city’s story from a broader and more inclusive lens.”

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Representation was not only a theme in the campaign, but also in the teams hired to create the campaign, says Bascome. Proverb Agency, in connection with Collette Phillips Communication and the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau, compiled a team of almost exclusively minority, female, and/or LGBTQ+ creatives, strategists, and production partners to work on the effort.

The imagery was shot by local Boston street photographer Harry Scales. In all, the effort represents a first-of-its kind cross collaboration between the City of Boston and the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The $2.5 million campaign, half of which is allocated for buying advertising space, is designed to target those within a four-hour drive – CT, NJ, NY, and across New England. Ads will be seen in transit media, outdoor media, social media, and traditional media through May 16.

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