Paul Farber, PhD, is one of the foremost experts on public monuments. He’s director of the nonprofit Monument Lab, and serves as Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Public Art & Space at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design.

For all of his accolades and accomplishments, for all of the monuments he’s seen around the world, one of his favorite public installations remains: the billboard at the intersection of I-76 and 676.

“It contains multitudes in a moment,” he says. “It’s like a bulletin board, a civic headline, for what’s going on in our city.”

Farber is referring, of course, to Visit Philadelphia’s ever-rotating, cheeky, IYKYK billboards that, since January 2024, have celebrated everything from the Eagles victory (“HELL,YEAH!” it currently reads), to Central High School’s robotics team winning an international competition (“BEEP, BOOP. YO!”), to the Wilma Theater earning a Tony Award.

“At a time when there are so many places to share your opinion, your ideas, your thoughts,” says Farber, “this one feels like the voice of the people.”

The billboard is just one expression of Visit Philadelphia’s campaign to instill pride in — and restore hope to — those of us who live here. And to be sure, when Visit Philly says “here,” they don’t just mean Philadelphia proper. “This could be somebody who, say, lives in the ’burbs or South Jersey, who maybe comes into the city for work or to go to brunch,” says Visit Philly President and CEO Angela Val (who is also a Citizen board member). “By focusing on civic pride [regionally], we’re hoping to encourage residents to rediscover and reconnect with the city.”

Thinking beyond tourists

When Visit Philadelphia was founded in 1996, it was with the official mission to build up the image of Philadelphia and bring in tourists through advertising, marketing, and public relations. Its founding was spearheaded by former Mayor Ed Rendell, then-Governor Tom Ridge, and Rebecca Rimel, then the CEO of The Pew Charitable Trusts. They envisioned branding Philadelphia as a leisure destination, similar in spirit to the iconic “I Love NY” campaign, increasing overnight stays, and developing a robust, data-driven approach to refine and target marketing efforts effectively.

“We see ourselves as the cheerleader for the city,” Val says. “And really, at the end of the day, we’re trying to boost the economy.”

Once they get people to Philadelphia, whether they’re coming for the day or spending the night, Visit Philly considers it part of their mandate to get them to do as many things as possible. “Go to museums, buy a t-shirt, have dinner, have drinks, spend the night in a hotel, see a show,” Val rattles off. “So they leave that money here with us, and they go back home to where they’re from.”

“It’s like a bulletin board, or civic headline, for what’s going on in our city.” –Paul Farber

Some of that money, she explains, goes into the City’s general fund, to help with day-to-day municipal needs, like filling potholes and shoveling snow. And some of it — specifically the hotel tax for stays within Philadelphia county –—goes back to Visit Philadelphia.

By contrast, the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau targets conferences and conventions; they’re the sales arm for the Convention Center. “The needs of somebody who’s coming for a conference is different from someone spending their own dollars on a leisure vacation, but our goal is all the same,” Val says. “To bring people to Philadelphia.”

Visit Philly has by all measures been a success: Initially, leisure travel accounted for only 14 percent of all hotel room nights; it now represents about 35 percent of hotel stays in Center City, according to Val.

With that mandate, for decades, the target demographic for Visit Philly was domestic travelers from outside the area — not those of us already here. “It is a little bit different, I’ll admit, for Visit Philadelphia to be more inwardly focused as opposed to outwardly focused,” Val says. So what changed?

Filling the “hope deficit”

Back in November 2023, then-Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker cast a spotlight on what she called Philadelphia’s “hope deficit.” Val was listening. She’d felt the post-Covid city slump, sure, and also how the mood changed when the Phillies started winning. And while she knew her organization’s task was to focus on those domestic tourists, she recognized that getting people to Philadelphia largely depended on locals, on fanning that sense of joy that permeates our city when our teams are doing well. See, Visit Philly’s research consistently shows that the number-one reason people visit Philadelphia is to see friends and family. Further, when people do come to Philly? Seventy-seven percent are likely to return — compared with 52 percent nationwide.

But, Val reasoned, who’s gonna invite people someplace they’re not proud of?

“I’m a person who believes that two things can be true at once. That you can have some challenges, but there’s good happening on the day-to-day too. And without telling people the good, you don’t have hope.” – Angela Val

So Visit Philly got to work. As lighthearted as their campaign may seem to us now, it’s grounded in rigorous research, explains Chief Marketing Officer Neil Frauenglass. His team conducted a benchmark study, in partnership with their research firm, Ipsos, to get a baseline sense of how people felt about their city, and they’ll continue to track the same folks’ sentiments throughout the campaign to measure impact. They talked to the organizations and businesses they support, to get their feedback. Simultaneously, they reached out to Philly’s five major sports franchises to find out how they do it — how they keep fans engaged even when they’re in a slump.

“On an international level, the one category that is so good at pride is sports. Sports franchises are able to get their fans connected whether they’re winning or losing, in season or out,” Frauenglass says. Visit Philly’s approach, then, became about treating the city like the sixth team. “We’re not trying to create pride — what we want to do is enable it,” Frauenglass says. To that end, they leaned on the three pillars of the sports fandom playbook: give people knowledge; give people stories; and build community.

For this project, the organization got additional funding from the City, the Chamber of Commerce, and foundations, including The William Penn Foundation. The full budget for the campaign is $3 million. And they’re putting it to work with a multifaceted approach.

Loving up Philly

There’s the “Philly Love Stories” Instagram series, which features people talking about how they ended up in Philadelphia and why they love it. There’s a weekly Monday partnership with CBS, when broadcaster Wakisha Bailey casts a spotlight on incredible Philadelphians around town. There’s The Good News newsletter, which launched in January, a roundup meant to be read in 30 seconds that compiles good news from around the city.

There are viral campaigns: Perhaps you remember “Bird Calls,” when Visit Philly strategically placed phones around the city, asking people to pick up and record a message to the Eagles? Visit Philly turned it into a video that was shared 1 million times on their social media — viral marketing gold.

Next up is a series of radio PSAs from iconic Philadelphia broadcast voices like Eagles announcer (and former All-Pro wide receiver) Mike Quick. And of course the group is already thinking about how to navigate 2026, when visitors from all over will descend upon our city for various sporting events like the World Cup and the MLB All-Star Game, and the 250th anniversary of our country’s founding.

“When people visit an urban environment, what they’re really looking for is the vibrancy on the street — and that vibrancy is created by the people who live there,” says Val, planting the seed to keep people from skipping town to avoid the influx of visitors. Val acknowledges that Philly’s not perfect — no city is. “I’m a person who believes that two things can be true at once. That you can have some challenges, but there’s good happening on the day-to-day, too. And without telling people the good, you don’t have hope.”

And of course, there’s that billboard, whose creativity comes largely from Visit Philly’s Senior Vice President of Strategic Integration, Cathy McVey, Senior Content Manager Michael Hanisco, and the in-house team. “It’s powerful,” says Farber. “It invites you into this citywide conversation. The fact that it is now iterative, that you can expect that when there is either major news or even just unexpected moments, here is one of the city’s potent places of meaning.”

He recalls how, when the Wilma Theater won that Tony Award, he could barely get around to telling others before it was already up on the billboard: “STANDING (Y)O FOR THE WILMA THEATER, WINNER OF A 2024 TONY AWARD.”

“I could talk about that billboard forever,” he says towards the end of our interview. “But by the time we hang up, they’ll have probably already put up a new one.”

THE CITIZEN BOOSTS PHILLY