Think You Know All About D.C.? Well, See if You Can Answer This Question

Do you know Washington's official tourism slogan?

Probably you know Virginia's: "Virginia Is for Lovers." That may be the best state tourism slogan of all time, and it wormed its way into the pop culture right after the state adopted it in 1969. Luckily, the state is keeping the slogan -- born at a Richmond ad agency during the days of Woodstock and Erich Segal's "Love Story" -- despite a silly recent controversy about whether a symbol that accompanies the slogan in state ads somehow mimics a nasty gang sign.

(Maryland's slogan is the clunky and strange "Seize the Day Off." I don't get it, either.)

But how about Washington's?

Writer David Henderson is putting together a book tentatively titled "Making News in a New Media World" in which he will advise executives and organization leaders on how to get their messages out through the news media. As part of that work, he got to thinking about slogans and when, if ever, they are effective.

Then he read a news story about the District's tourism slogan and realized that although it's been in use for nearly a decade, he had had no idea what it was.

So he sent out a simple request to 60 national and local journalists, lawyers, administrators, real estate agents, local business owners, leaders of associations and some friends -- all people who live in Washington or used to. Tell me the city's tourism slogan, he said.

You can predict the results: 43 of the 44 people who responded came up empty. The one guy who knew was the editor of a trade publication who had just been to Boston, where he'd seen an ad for D.C. tourism and so the slogan was fresh in his mind. My response was wrong: I thought the slogan was "A Capital City," which still appears on some of the older license plates around town.

"Most slogans are ineffective -- we, as a society, communicate in sentences, not cryptic tag lines," Henderson says. "We just don't use slogans in conversation. . . . Slogans have become less and less effective. Slogans and tag lines will never replace authentic messages that seem to reach inside and connect with our emotions."

All true, but we also know that slogans can be very sticky, and that plays at least some role in good marketing. I know that "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should," even if 40 years later, I still haven't bought the product.

And for those of you who grew up in Southern California in a certain era, you will always believe that "Tina Delgado is alive -- alive!" even if you have never known exactly what that means.

Okay, if you haven't Googled it by now, here it is: "The American Experience." Lame and utterly unmemorable. I asked readers on the blog if they could do better, and here are some of their entries: