Seattle Goes 'Metronatural'

Who doesn't like Seattle? Who doesn't think of the pearl of the Pacific Northwest as a fine place to visit, what with the Bumbershoot festival, the Space Needle, the flying fish at Pike's Place, and all that natural beauty, like the Puget Sound (and let's not even get into the "Seattle sound")?

Well, apparently Seattle's basic beauty isn't enough for the city's tourist fishermen, who are well on their way to spending half a million dollars to verbally bait the hook. Their brainchild? The now-trademarked term, "Metronatural."

According to an Associated Press story, "'Metronatural' is the result of a 16-month, $200,000 effort by Seattle's Convention and Visitors Bureau, which included 60 people from the bureau, the mayor's office and businesses. The bureau plans to spend $300,000 marketing the slogan, er, 'destination brand position.'"

Now that's a lot of money. I'm sure Paul and I could have come up with another slogan to describe the lovely city for, oh, somewhere south of $10,000 and a couple sixpacks of Red Hook. And if we couldn't get the job done, Seattle could have turned to Austin American-Statesman writer Helen Anders, who serves up this alternative tag line: "Seattle: It's Portland on steroids."

P.S. We're not booked for Bumbershoot 2007 yet!