RSSWry take on acronym has Fruita buzzing
WTF designers Steve and Denise Hight of Fruita, with their dog, Sebastian, show the “Welcome to Fruita” sticker that has become very popular in the area.
What’s your take on WTF? Welcome to Fruita, that is.
The city of Fruita is eyeing the edgy acronym in an advertising campaign after a local couple hit upon the idea and quickly distributed 500 stickers they created.
“It snowballed bigger than we ever expected,” said Steve Hight, who created the stickers with his wife, Denise. “We’ve been passing them out like candy. They caught on immediately with everybody who saw them.”
Indeed, after city officials took note of some stickers on a table at the Fruita Civic Center, they wondered whether the message would work to boost tourism, possibly using the “WTF Welcome to Fruita” phrase on billboard advertising.
The Hights gave the city permission to go ahead with a plan to use their idea, Steve Hight said.
Reviews have been mixed about the proposal since the city began accepting comments on that marketing idea as well as another, separate, but somewhat plucky, advertising campaign. Both can be viewed at http://www.fruita.org/wtf.html.
“Either you love it or you hate it,” said Odette Phelps, Fruita’s human resources director. Phelps has been taking email comments about the ideas, though comments solely have been directed at the WTF idea. WTF is an acronym made popular in recent years as shorthand in text messages. It stands for “What the (expletive)?”
A final decision on the matter rests with Fruita City Manager Clint Kinney and members of the Fruita Tourism Advisory Board, Phelps said.
Robbie Urquhart, special-projects coordinator for the Fruita Chamber of Commerce, said she is fond of the catch phrase.
“I like it, I do,” she said.
In general, Urquhart said the younger set seems to like the idea, but older folks, not so much. Urquhart counts herself in the older category, but still she is warm to the idea.
“I think it’s hysterical,” she said. “It’s something that’s going to grab your attention. You don’t want something ho-hum. It’s not nasty, it’s funny.”
As a business-based organization, the chamber doesn’t take a stance on the idea, Urquhart said, but she doesn’t think the message would detract from business.
Considering Fruita’s limited yearly budget for tourism advertising, the WTF idea is creative, said Eric Mello, who works for advertising and marketing agency Cobb & Associates. Mello was hired by the city and created a set of images centered around all of the outdoor opportunities in Fruita, affixed with the slogan, “Hell yeah.”
Mello said Fruita, with its annual adverting budget of about $65,000, is going up against much larger tourism destinations, such as Moab, that have budgets from $200,000 to $1 million a year.
“You’ve got to push it a little bit when you’re up against the big boys,” he said. “You want somebody in Denver to go, ‘Dude, this weekend, let’s go ride Fruita.’ “
Fruita already is a burgeoning tourist destination with its popular Mike the Headless Chicken festival, but the majority of tourists arrive in droves with mountain bikes in tow. Trail systems at 18 Road and off Interstate 70 at the Kokopelli Trailhead are a big part of the estimated $20 million infused annually into the local economy by mountain biking.
When considering the outdoors types Fruita is trying to attract and its current vibe of being a funky small town, the WTF statement may be fitting, Mello said. The message is similar to his “Hell yeah” catch phrase. Mello and his company conceived of the oversized banners on the grain silo visible from Interstate 70 that depict a mountain biker and a dinosaur. Mello recently placed a WTF bumper sticker on his vehicle.
“With the outdoor adventure people, you want to get their attention,” Mello said. “You’re purely telling those mountain bikers: We’re here, and we’re your kind of community, and we embrace you, and we embrace that funky feel. Now we run the risk of another community out-funking us.”
Hight said he has given a local T-shirt shop, Sew What?, 163 N. Park Square, access to the logo to reproduce for merchandise. He placed a copyright on the logo, but Hight said he is not interested in making money off the idea if it can help promote the local economy.
“It’s friendly,” Hight said. “Yeah, WTF has the connotation with the F-word, but it’s not used in an aggressive way.”
He added, “We need to hurry and get some bike stickers. We know it will be very popular with the bike crowd.”
COMMENTS
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.Why do we have to use profanity—or implied profanity—to attract folks to Fruita? And, when using such language, what kind of folks do we want to attract to Fruita? If we use this to promote Fruita, I’ll tell folks I live in “suburban Grand Junction”—not Fruita.
It stinks. It is juvenile and that is fine if you are promoting a dumpy bar or some such thing.
But if you want people to take you seriously, I think you’d need to show a little more self-respect than that.