Something fishy about out of state ads

An ongoing advertising campaign in Chicago bombards riders on the city’s commuter trains with images of Montana. 

Descending the stairs at the “L” station just outside Wrigley Field last month, I was surprised to see before me on the train information screen a video of two bull elk battling. Moments later as I was crossing the station, I looked down to see a giant map of Montana painted on the floor. I was walking across Lake McDonald.

It’s all part of a Montana ad blitz started four years ago to attract tourists from the City of Big Shoulders to the Big Sky.

I’m just concerned it may not be Montana.

Not that it makes much difference.

It’s close.

But I fear some of the iconic images used in the ad campaign are actually from Wyoming.

Like the train car completely wrapped with an image of two bison in Yellowstone National Park.

Three of the entrances to the park are in Montana, but the vast majority of the park lies in Wyoming. I suspect that’s where the image of the bison was shot.

Heck, sometimes Montanans can’t tell the difference themselves. A photo on the front page of the Great Falls Tribune last Saturday teasing an inside story about how much Montanans love living here was a good example. It was a shot of the lower falls of the Yellowstone River deep in Wyoming.

A number of years ago, when I was the features editor at the Bozeman Chronicle I was given a video to review. It was called something like “My Montana” and was full of beautiful images of spectacular landscapes. I recognized much of it as places I knew in Wyoming. When I pointed this out to the videographer, he snatched back the tape and stormed out of the office.

We all have a picture in our mind’s eye of what Montana looks like. My brother-in-law posts a picture from his front porch overlooking Butte every morning on Facebook. His Montana looks little like mine where the prairie stretches like a rolling sea and the distant mountain ranges rise like islands.

When I lived in Cooke City the view out my bedroom window was of the backside of Pilot Peak, a 13,000-foot mountain in Wyoming. It was a spectacular view of Wyoming from Montana.

Returning on Amtrak from that recent trip to Chicago I could only guess where North Dakota ended and Montana began. There’s not much chance, however, that the state tourism office will start using North Dakota images in their ad campaign.

We’d rather be mistaken for Wyoming.

Parker Heinlein is at 

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