Philadelphia-based Quaker City Mercantile (formerly known as Gyro Worldwide) ("Breakin' the Rules since 1988") has devised a new tourism campaign for its hometown premised on the much buzzed about designation of Philly as the "Ugliest City in America," based on a Travel & Leisure online poll. The agency has created a series of ads that feature "simple, documentary-style photography that tells it like is," capturing startling unattractive people and taglines such as "Come Visit Uglytown U.S.A!" [cut to shot of director John Waters rolling his eyes and chortling at this way off-tone attempt to mimic his campily clever love/hate approach to Baltimore]

Quaker City Mercantile:Oh Philebrity, don't be sore because Michael Klein saw what an awesome idea this was, when you did not.

Quaker City Mercantile (formerly known as Gyro Worldwide) Announces Ad campaign: Philly is More Ugly When You Sleep Over!

"PHILEBRITY: YAWN

Quaker City Mercantile: I thought you would say something like that. haha

PHILEBRITY: Seriously, I have to run this shit now? How many of you people work over there? And it's THIS? This is the press gag you come up with? Please try harder.

The Ugliest City In America - The People, That Is

"Philadelphia is home to the least attractive people in the United States, a survey of visitors and residents showed on Friday. The city of more than 1.5 million people was also found to be among the least stylish, least active, least friendly and least worldly, according to the 'America's Favorite Cities' survey by Travel & Leisure magazine and CNN Headline News."

"About 60,000 people responded to the online survey -- at www.travelandleisure.com -- which ranked 25 cities in categories including shopping, food, culture, and cityscape, said Amy Farley, senior editor at the magazine."

Quaker City Mercantile: Constantly clowning itself, master media manipulators or wannabe cool kids? Behold their new music blog - think The Fader minus Cornerstone and replaced with, oh dear, Stephen Grasse - and discuss. Or don't. [TheWalrus]

History repeats itself triumphantly at this ad agency as it revamps with retro wares.

"I'm a history nut," he says. Steven Grasse is the founder and CEO of Quaker City Mercantile, and just by simply taking a step into the agency's Philadelphia office space, you can tell he isn't kidding.

Down every hall, on nearly every wall is some unexpected (and often offbeat) artifact from a bygone era. Upholstered chairs crisscrossing aesthetics and ages, a gilt mirror, kitschy paint-by-number pieces and 19th-century prints are scattered throughout the 12,000-square-foot space. It's a life-size conversation piece.

"We really believe in giving back to our community here at Quaker City Mercantile, which is exactly why we decided to hold a contest to see who has the worst logo in all of Philadelphia. After we laugh long and hard at all your sorry, sorry logos, we're going to pick the absolute ugliest and laugh even harder. Then, out of the kindness of our little creative hearts, we are going to design you a brand new logo and give it to you for free. Wow! We rock!"

The "winning" ugly logo was then redesigned by Quaker City Mercantile's crack team of interns and the results are actually pretty good. Quaker City Mercantile (formerly known as Gyro Worldwide) then filmed the bad and the ugly. And, they got people on the street comments. And then they filmed the redesign and people's comments about that.

For a low-budget marketing idea, this one really goes the extra mile in its cleverness. You can check out the entire campaign at Philly's Worst Logo.

Hugs and success,

Wendy Maynard
Your friendly marketing maven