COASTAL CITY PICKS FIGHT WITH VIRGINIA BEACH

There’s a great scene in the movie Braveheart, just prior to a major battle, in which the big brute Hamish asks William Wallace “Where are you going” as the Scottish leader rides toward the middle of the battlefield to discuss terms with his English adversaries. Wallace responds, “I’m going to pick a fight.”

I wasn’t privy to the internal discussions of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce when they decided on a tourism marketing campaign dissing Virginia Beach, but I imagine it looked something like that scene. Only instead of thousands of lives hanging in the balance, there are millions of dollars.

The ad pops up when someone searches for Virginia Beach on Google. It touts Myrtle Beach as a cheaper, more relaxing and more thrilling alternative to its fellow resort up the Atlantic coast.

Myrtle Beach Chamber head Brad Dean said he was surprised Virginia Beach officials took offense at what he called a playful Internet tactic.

Dean said the chamber will not change the ad now but will review whether to run similar ads in the future. [WACH.com]

If Myrtle Beach officials learned anything from that film, it’s that once Wallace had decided on his course of action, he was bold enough to see it through. And look how that turned out. Sure he got killed at the end of the movie, but Scotland eventually won her freedom.

The Chamber of Commerce needs to stick to its guns here and fight for what is right. Virginia Beach can take our tourism dollars, but they will never take our miniature golf courses!

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Around the state. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.