A new ad campaign called Come Home To Midland aims to reel in deviant natives who strayed from the Tall City. Maybe they left for Austin, Dallas or Houston in search of, oh, I don't know, culture, professional sports teams, an economy not totally dependent on whether or not the oil industry is currently sucking. Whatever it was, it's time to come back home to "a higher quality of life," say the ads, which were designed to look like missing-persons posters. Bad traffic, unfriendly people and crowded living conditions apparently make cities like Dallas and Austin practically unlivable.
The "missing persons"--Robert, Tito, Marcela and Kenny--are all slaving away at oppressive office jobs far from their Midland roots, oblivious to the fact that their lives are meaningless because they're not back in West Texas, arm-wrestling with their apparently mildly brain-damaged high school buddies. Seriously. Watch the video.
Created by Austin-based ad agency Door Number Three and marketed by Dallas-based PR firm The Gentry Agency, the Come Home To Midland campaign has, amazingly enough, failed even to convince its own promoters. When asked when she's packing up and heading west, PR lady Suzanne Gentry said, incredulously, "I don't think so." Seems her husband's a pilot from Seattle and he has to live here in Big D for work. "It was hard enough to convince him to move to Dallas." Poor guy.
Besides, Midland's crawling with jobs, Gentry emphasized. And by "crawling," I mean there are 21 whole openings listed on the site. Anybody want to be a full-time "counselor intern"? Takers? No? Bueller? --Andrea Grimes