City's celebrities get busy boostin' Houston

HOUSTON, TEXAS

Yao Ming's Houston is not Beyonce Knowles' Houston, and not just because the 7-foot-6-inch Rockets star needs two more feet of head room.

George and Barbara Bush's Houston is not George Foreman's Houston, either, nor Dr. Denton Cooley's, nor A.J. Foyt's.

If this booming world center of energy traders, doctors and space scientists is hard to define, with a problem even worse than a negative image -- no image at all -- the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau has a remedy: a new television and print campaign called "My Houston" that features celebrities extolling aspects of their native or adopted city.

(For Foyt, it was driving 200 miles per hour on the 610 Loop -- back when the traffic wasn't so bad; for Cooley, it is his "full schedule of surgeries." And Yao -- well, Yao likes Yao Restaurant & Bar where, he says, "I know the owner.")

The campaign could not be rolled out in a lovelier season. Houston is ablaze with pink and white azaleas, and construction workers downtown are polishing a new $122 million emerald gem, Discovery Green, a 12-acre park with a lake and restaurants amid a forest of rising commercial and residential towers.

The testimonials fly in the face of a commonly acknowledged truth: that Houstonians themselves are among the city's chief detractors, taking a certain pride in reciting their miseries and voicing astonishment, even chagrin, when newcomers and visitors say they actually like it here.

Houstonians "apologize for the city," said Lindsey Brown, a spokeswoman for the visitors' bureau who devised the campaign with Holly Clapham, vice president for marketing. "Why? I would love to know." It could represent an extreme form of Southern hospitality, Brown said, "like when people say, 'Oh, my house is so messy;' you point it out because you don't want guests to feel they have to point it out."

Other cities and states have tried variations on "My Houston," but this subtropical metropolis of 2.2 million people, the nation's most sprawling city, spread over 630 square miles -- large enough to encompass Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Detroit -- has a special burden: a reputation for banality, even ugliness.

Longtime Houstonians still shudder in recollection of the large yellow sign that once graced a used-car dealership offering unbelievable bargains alongside northbound Interstate 45: "Owner Has Brain Damage." The sign is gone but there is still plenty to disdain in the billboard jungles that line the city's intertwining freeways, themselves often gummed up with rush-hour traffic and construction delays.

In 2004, a guerrilla marketing firm, ttweak, began boosting Houston with an unconventional campaign and still-popular picture book, "Houston. It's Worth It." A first phase listed the city's "afflictions" -- among them hurricanes, heat, flying cockroaches, mosquitoes and polluted air -- concluding that the city's many charms made living here worth the trouble.

It was not an approach favored by the Convention and Visitors Bureau. "We couldn't compete with New Orleans and Chicago if we opened up with cockroaches," Brown said.

The new testimonials, she said, grew out of a convention of meeting planners last year at which a 12-minute video, "One Day in Houston," was shown. Viewers reacted to favorite aspects, exclaiming, "That's my Houston!" and the name stuck.

Many stars volunteered their observations, although some demanded pay; they were not used. Of the several dozen who were: Clay Walker, the country singer, promoted the zoo and Texas' biggest rodeo; Hilary Duff, the actress and singer, Mexican food; Oscar de la Rosa, lead vocalist of the Latino group La Mafia, cultural diversity; and the Bushes, the city's big heart and neighborliness.