The Missouri Historical Society’s “I am St. Louis” campaign took the metro area by storm this past year. Now it’s gone international.
The campaign stemmed from a speech that the nonprofit’s CEO, Jody Sowell, has been giving around St. Louis in recent years, stressing the region’s incredible history and pivotal role in key American events. (“I am the place that was known as Mound City, that was ruled by three empires, where enslaved people used the courts to fight for their freedom,” it begins. “I am the place that argued it should be the nation’s capital. I am St. Louis.”) It escalated last September, when Sowell’s organization asked people to share their own St. Louis story—and triggered an onslaught of no fewer than 350 versions on social media.
Last month, Sowell and Explore St. Louis marketing director Julie Gilbert did a tag-team presentation about the campaign’s success at the City Nation Place event in Vancouver. That annual convening draws tourism agencies to discuss, in its words, “nation, city, and place branding and marketing strategies,” Sowell says just about every other presenter came from a branding agency or an organization like Explore St. Louis. Says Sowell, “I was certainly the oddball, but it was truly, truly energizing.”…