How do you brand a whole dang city? Tourism taglines are part marketing, part micro-poetry. At their best, they fuse so tightly with a place they become shorthand for it: think “What Happens Here, Stays Here” (Las Vegas) or “The City That Never Sleeps” (NYC). Some are rallying cries, like “Keep Austin Weird.” Others go for punny charm: “The Sweetest Place on Earth” (Hershey, Pa.) and my personal *chef’s kiss* favorite, “Rare. Well Done.” (Omaha, Neb.)
For Knoxville, branding has been more of a moving target. In the past decade we’ve tried on a few personalities. There was a “The Memories Stay With You” campaign launched in 2014 — lil bit Hallmark-y and probably not accurate for Vol football tourists who get started at 10 a.m. “Knoxville Will Surprise You” came along in 2017 (surprise … you thought we’d be boring?). Then, in 2019, the tagline-that-couldn’t-catch-its-breath: “A nature-loving, adventure-seeking, artsy-kinda town.” Fun and folksy, but a mouthful.
Last week, Visit Knoxville gathered community leaders and tourism pros at Covenant Health Park for the big reveal of the next chapter in our city’s brand story. As Visit Knoxville president Kim Bumpas put it, “We’re going to get away from the run-on sentence, and we’re going to go with something different.”
Why Branding Matters
To understand why these slogans matter, you first have to understand why tourism matters. Which, honestly, I have to remind myself on a regular basis — usually while shimmying through a crowd muttering “who ARE all you people?” or hearing about yet another hotel going up downtown — all I can say is it BETTER have a rooftop bar. The knee-jerk reaction is: don’t we have enough people already?
But those people you’re dodging on Market Square? They’re basically walking tax breaks. As Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development Mark Ezell pointed out at Visit Knoxville’s marketing creative reveal party, tourism is Tennessee’s second-largest industry, bringing in $31 billion last year. In Knox County alone, visitors spent over $2 billion, which translated into nearly $200 million in tax revenue.
In plain English: downtown bachelorette parties, bass-fishing enthusiasts and SEC football diehards are footing the bill for things like schools — in fact, Ezell said, tourism accounts for 95% of education funding in Tennessee. “When somebody takes a Tennessee vacation,” Ezell said, “it helps pay for a teacher’s salary, for classrooms, for the future of our children, and it keeps our taxes low.”
Visit Knoxville is the organization charged with putting our big little city on the map: luring travelers, booking conferences and events, recruiting film and TV productions, and generally making sure people know we exist (and want to come here). And they know the importance of a catchy calling card.
Earlier this summer, Visit Knoxville announced a new partnership with The Zimmerman Agency, an advertising firm with decades of experience in this sort of thing. While they’re headquartered in Tallahassee, Fla., they have staff based here in Knoxville and their team spent plenty of time getting to know the city. I actually met them back in June while Visit Knoxville folks were taking them on a tour downtown. They were waiting at the crosswalk; I was the lady crouched on Gay Street photographing a tiny bronze Knoxville Newt on a drainpipe.
You know, just a totally normal Knoxville person doing totally normal Knoxville things.
Just … being curious.
Enter: ‘Calling the Curious’
This is the one we’re going with.
The Zimmerman team described the campaign as a “rallying cry” — something broad enough to flex across audiences: families, sports fans, music aficionados, outdoor adventurers, indoor cats, etc. The first round of creative materials (shown in draft AI-rendered form at the reveal party — I swear I spotted a Sasquatch on a mountain bike) leaned hard into curiosity as both theme and tone. The full rollout of “Calling the Curious” will ramp up in the months ahead.
Alyssa Sloan, Visit Knoxville’s senior director of marketing, explained the thinking behind the choice. Unlike the laundry-list approach of the previous campaign, “Calling the Curious” is an open-ended invitation. “This new direction works to welcome all to explore whatever they find interesting as they visit Knoxville,” she said. “Like who among us, for example, is not curious about the Sunsphere, especially those mysterious upper floors?”
That got a laugh. But also… seriously, what is up there.
Knoxville contains multitudes. Maybe you’re curious about opera, or the Urban Wilderness, or both. “The truth is,” Sloan said, “Knoxville has endless experiences on tap, and this tagline aims to invite all types of explorers to see that for themselves.”
Visually, the tagline is displayed in a bold but quirky font on a banner — something that looks halfway between a Wes Anderson title card and birthday bunting for a fairy garden. It’s not slick or glossy; it’s proud, charming and a little offbeat. Sort of like Knoxville itself. Fly your lil freak flag, Knoxville!
Knoxville might not be the “scruffy little city” it once was. But as more folks catch on to our secret sauce, it feels like the right time to double down on what makes us us. Local musician Todd Steed sang, about North Knoxville, “It’s the last place in America that ain’t trying to be somewheres else.” I think we can extend that blessing outward. At our best, Knoxville isn’t trying to be Chattanooga, Asheville or (lord knows) Nashville. We don’t have to try too hard, or pretend. We can just keep calling the curious — and trust they’ll find plenty worth discovering when they get here.