The marketers are from the Atlantic City Alliance, an organization formed by casino owners and the State of New Jersey to help attract tourists. A campaign getting under way this week seeks to reassure would-be visitors that Atlantic City in general — and its famous boardwalk specifically — are in condition to welcome them back.

“It takes more than a hurricane to stop us from doing what we do,” television, radio, print and online ads proclaim. The print ads, scheduled to start on Wednesday, feature scenes of the boardwalk and other Atlantic City attractions with a caption advising that the photographs were “taken November 17, 2012” — in other words, after the storm.

The “doing what we do” phrase echoes the theme, “Do AC,” of a fast-paced, $20 million campaign with a youthful feel that the alliance has been running since April. Forecasts that the hurricane would hit Atlantic City hard led the alliance to suspend the fall part of the campaign, with a budget estimated at $6 million, on Oct. 27, two days before the storm’s arrival.

Plans to resume the ads after the storm passed, however, were upended by reports on broadcast networks and cable channels that the storm had wrecked much or all of the oceanfront boardwalk. Although the storm’s damage had been confined to what officials described as an abandoned boardwalk on an inlet, executives of the alliance learned, much to their dismay, that many people around the country thought the famous boardwalk was in ruins.

For instance, according to a poll commissioned by the alliance that was conducted by Russell Research in East Rutherford, N.J., 41 percent of respondents said they believed the boardwalk had been destroyed.

“We were absolutely overwhelmed,” said Liza Cartmell, president of the alliance, by the widespread misperception that “the iconic boardwalk of Atlantic City was gone.”

Compounding the problem, Ms. Cartmell said, were the power disruptions that affected many residents of the primary markets that send visitors to Atlantic City: New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia. They missed the media follow-ups that corrected the original reports, she said.

Another complication was that other boardwalks in the region, on the Jersey Shore and elsewhere, did suffer significant damage, and some were wrecked.

Weeknight business for Atlantic City’s hotels after the storm has been “minimal,” Ms. Cartmell said. “You can tell it’s very, very, very slow.” She estimated occupancy as “well under” 50 percent.

And weekends, typically more busy than weeknights, have been “much softer” than normal, Ms. Cartmell said, with occupancy rates around 6o to 80 percent rather than the usual rates of more than 90 percent.

So rather than resume the regular campaign, the alliance executives decided that a special flight of ads was necessary and allocated about $850,000 of what was left unspent from the fall campaign budget. The special campaign, like the regular “Do AC” ads, is being created by Havas Worldwide New York, the agency that the alliance hired in February.

The special ads are intended to have “the clarity of a single message: ‘Atlantic City is open for business,’ ” said Lee Garfinkel, co-chairman at Havas Worldwide New York and chief creative officer for global brands at Havas Worldwide, part of the Havas Creative division of Havas.

The special campaign also uses phrases like “Our boardwalk still standing strong” and “We welcome you back as the Jersey Shore makes its comeback.”

The television commercial, which began running on Monday, is re-edited from the spots that had been running since April, Mr. Garfinkel said, to be “a little more relaxed” — that is, slowed down somewhat, presenting more sedate images and running less text to read on-screen.

For example, the new commercial includes a vignette of a group of people playing a casual game of football on the beach, which is not in the previous spots.

Unlike the print ad, the commercial does not present scenes of the boardwalk after the storm. “If we were able to get down there and shoot footage post-hurricane, that would have been good,” Mr. Garfinkel acknowledged. But it was not possible given the time constraints to produce the commercial as soon as possible, he added.

Jeff Guaracino, chief strategy and communications officer at the alliance, said the special campaign was scheduled to run through the end of the year.

Executives “hope to switch back to more normal” ads after Jan. 1, he added, and will monitor public perceptions and data like occupancy rates in deciding how to proceed.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/business/media/atlantic-city-rushes-to-counter-storm-reports.html?partner=rss&emc=rss