Let The Game – Candy Hatcher

LET THE GAME-AND PROMOTIONS-BEGIN

Palm Beach Post (Florida) December 21, 1994

CANDY HATCHER

The annual, most-watched event in the world is coming, and a marketing committee is spending $ 3.5 million to put the best face possible on South Florida.

It’s pushing stone crab claws. Lush green golf courses. Yachts. Leisurely lunches by the Intracoastal Waterway. Anything to impress ”the top 1 percent, maybe 2 percent of America,” who will be here the last week of January for Super Bowl XXIX, said Charles Crispin, a chairman of the South Florida Super Bowl XXIX Host Committee.

Television and radio ads are being produced in English, Spanish and Creole. Forty billboards will implore travelers to ”Be Part of the Fun.” A telephone line in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties (930-SB95) has been set up to give information about Super Bowl activities – but not how to get tickets.

”We want everyone throughout South Florida to know that they can be involved in the fun,” even if they can’t go to the football game, Crispin said.

Corporate, private and government sources are paying for the marketing effort. Palm Beach County, which contributed $ 90,000, will benefit, said Bill Wilkins, assistant county administrator and a vice president of the host committee.

Organizers have planned a three-day ”Fun on Flagler” weekend Jan. 20-22 along Flagler Drive in downtown West Palm Beach to stir excitement about the Super Bowl. More than 2,500 hotel rooms in Palm Beach County are expected to be filled with Super Bowl spectators, Wilkins said.

During the next five weeks, the host committee plans to distribute 300,000 dining guides, transportation guides and special events catalogs at airport information booths, hotel lobbies and to NFL fans who are expected to attend the Super Bowl.

”We want them sitting in their rooms, saying, ‘Wow! I didn’t know there was so much to see and do here!’ ” Crispin said.

The dining guide features 327 restaurants in the three counties – 51 in Palm Beach County alone. Each entry, solicited by American Express, paid $ 100 toward printing costs, said Cheryl Carter, head of restaurant coordination for the host committee.

The visitor’s guide features such Palm Beach attractions as the Henry Flagler Museum, Lion Country Safari, Worth Avenue, the Palm Beach bike trail and the Kravis Center.

Chambers of Commerce are working in the three counties to involve local businesses as ”super hosts” the week of the game. Being such a host requires a commitment ”to be friendly to customers and recognize fair-pricing guidelines,” organizers said.

The program is intended to counteract problems Miami has had in hosting previous Super Bowls: price-gouging on everything tourist-related the week of the game. ”We want to continue to have events like this,” said Bruce Budd, vice president of the Host Committee.

The host committee, made up of 150 people on 22 specialized committees, hopes to find as many as 6,000 volunteers to staff airport, hotel and mall information booths the week before the Super Bowl. They’re serious about helping South Florida reform its image.

”Our first mission is to be hosts,” Crispin said. Make the most of the opportunity to show off to the 750 million people watching the game on television. Present a good impression to the thousands of visitors who will be in Joe Robbie Stadium Jan. 29.

”We want them to leave here and help develop and inform and reform images,” Crispin said.