I'm Dreaming, of a juicy....Turkey!

I saw a commercial, as I was getting dressed this morning, that was an advertisement for the Turkey Tourism Bureau. It showed a bunch of very colorful, very majestic scenes and made Turkey look like a very appealing place to visit. At the end of the commercial, the tagline, “Allow yourself to…DREAM OF TURKEY,” appeared on the screen.

I found this tagline unnecessarily vague in it’s instruction because the truth of the matter is that, on many occasions, I have dreamt of Turkey. However, this typically happens just before and after Thanksgiving and my dreams also tend to involve stuffing, which, truth be told, I enjoy more than I do turkey.

I don’t think I’m alone in my turkey dreams. However, I’m not sure many people actually dream about the country Turkey. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Turkey the country, just that, as far as dreams go, turkey the sandwich seems more attainable and filling.

There is a very good chance that, tonight, I will in fact dream of turkey now, but sadly, not the way the makers of this commercial have intended I should. Istanbul will not feature prominently in this dream, but a side of cranberry sauce may.

I feel bad for the people who made this commercial because I’m sure they sat around in a room and debated a lot of great ideas and slogans for their tourism campaign and spent lots of money making a beautiful commercial full of imagery and wonder, that instead of inspiring people to come take a vacation in Turkey the country are, in reality, just inspiring people to have turkey sandwiches for lunch today and make turkey dinners this week.

I wish I had been present when they had their meeting because I would have made a few really good suggestions. First, I think they should have given some serious thought to changing the name of their country to Stuffing. Don’t get me wrong, turkey is good, but the stuffing is really the best part of Thanksgiving Day meals. In case they didn’t like that idea though, as some people are sensitive about changing the names of their countries and such, I would have focused the tourism campaign on how good the turkey is in Turkey.

Turkey the meat, seems like a fairly easy image to connect to Turkey the country. I’m confident that even a bad advertising firm could have nailed that one. Got Turkey? Gobble Gobble! You bring the cranberries, we’ve got the Turkey! I mean, this is child’s play! Think of how many people visit Italy every year for the food. I think if Turkey really embraced it’s name and make turkey a priority, people would flock there in hungry anticipation of nightly Thanksgiving feasts! Now that, would make me dream of Turkey!