Muraglia, James, Seaside Heights, 1976. Oil on canvas. Seaside Heights Borough Hall.

By Steve Strunsky | NJ Advance Media

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The competition among Jersey shore towns is so intense that even regulars need encouragement to keep coming back, and it may take a free movie or a blues festival just to lure first-timers for a day trip.

"Anything, nowadays, that mom and dad have to spend money on is a competitor," said Lou Cirigliano, director of operations for Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, an Ocean County borough with the added challenge of shaking off an unsavory reputation reinforced by MTV's Jersey Shore, the reality TV show set in Seaside from 2009 to 2012.

So marketing is crucial for shore towns vying for a share of the $20 billion a year that state officials say tourists spend in the four counties along the shore.

Here are nine ways those towns try to fill their beaches, boardwalks and municipal coffers.

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Steve Strunsky | NJ Advance Media

1. Getting an early start

Long before body surfers catch their first wave, toddlers build their first sand castle, or beach bartenders mix their first margarita, marketing teams for beach resorts along the 141 miles of Jersey Shore lay the groundwork for what everybody hopes — weather permitting — will be a great summer season.

“We start planning in September and October," said Ben Rose, a spokesman for the Greater Wildwoods Investment, Development and Tourism and Authority, an agency created jointly by the legislature and the Cape May County communities of Wildwood, North Wildwood and Wildwood Crest to promote the area using a special tax on tourism-related businesses.

"We have brainstorming sessions and marketing strategy meetings. We start to put together our budget in November, which is approved in December," Rose said. "And then begin to put together our calendar of events."

Typically, March is when local officials and marketing professionals say tourists will begin to see and hear print, radio and occasional television ads, social media posts, billboards and brochures that competitive shore towns or their consultants will put out ahead of every summer season.

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MTV

2. Promoting a friendly image

Rebranding, or changing its image, is one way a resort can appeal to a more lucrative, less problematic, or otherwise preferable customer base.

Seaside Heights is trying to do just that, with a campaign intended to attract a more wholesome clientele made up of parents and children, who officials and business leaders hope will stay longer, spend more money on a broader ranges of local attractions, and cause fewer problems than the Jersey Shore crowd associated with the borough.

Seaside Heights won worldwide fame — infamy, to some — as the location of MTV's Jersey Shore, which exploited the muscle-bound, big-haired stereotypes referred to by the show as "Guidos" and "Guidettes."

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Since being elected mayor in 2015, Anthony Vaz has led a campaign to shake that image and re-brand Seaside Heights as a family destination.

"My values are family values," said Vaz, a Republican, who has a picture of himself with House Speaker Paul Ryan on his office wall. "At one time, we were known for MTV and Snooki and that kind of crap. We don’t want that anymore."

Dee Pelligrino's company, DP Shore Solutions, designs and coordinates Seaside Heights' annual marketing campaign.

"Whether it’s a printed ads, or it’s a billboard ad, the imagery is very family focused, and the events are very family oriented,” Pelligrino said.

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Sea Isle City

3. Using social media

Naturally, various social media outlets are included in shore towns' marketing campaigns, from the Ocean Grove Beaches Twitter feed, to Long Branch's Facebook page, to Sea Isle City's YouTube channel.

Sea Isle City, a Cape May County town largely overshadowed by the Wildwoods and Cape May City's much-hyped Victorian charm, released four new YouTube videos last week under its "Forecast is Fun" campaign to raise its cheerful but sleepy profile.

This after having clung to quaint marketing techniques that included the annual Sara the Turtle Festival and repainting the logo on its water tower from "Welcome to Sea Isle City" to "Smile, you're in Sea Isle City."

While the new crop of videos are still geared mainly toward children, parents and grandparents, one of them offers an updated version of summertime active adulthood, focusing on a mature couple as they traverse the calm, shallow waters of the Townsend Channel on paddle boards.

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Steve Strunsky | NJ Advance Media

4. Brochures, billboards and newspaper ads

Even in the digital age, old-fashion marketing tools still apply to the shore.

That includes billboards along the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Turnpikes and the Atlantic City Expressway, newspaper advertisements in local and regional newspapers and other publications, some cable television advertising — although TV is too expensive for some municipal ad campaigns — and the ubiquitous brochures that fill the racks at Garden State Parkway and other highway rest areas.

The glossy, stapled guides typically include a calendar of summer events, a map of local streets, ads from the local businesses, and a sunny, warm welcome from the mayor.

"Ours are just about to go out," Mayor Vaz said this month.

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Greater Wildwoods Improvement, Tourism and Development Authority

5. A tourism tax to pay for promotions

In Cape May County, the neighboring communities of Wildwood, Wildwood Crest and North Wildwood are known collectively as the Wildwoods, and the three towns have officially banded together to market themselves that way, using a special 2 percnt tax on hotel stays and prepared food and drinks authorized by state lawmakers.

Under enabling legislation in 1993, the three towns formed an agency known as the Greater Wildwoods Improvement, Tourism and Development Authority, or GWITDA.

"The legislature came up with that name," Rose noted.

The tax raised a record $4.76 million in 2017, Rose said. The money that pays for the Wildwoods' annual joint marketing campaign, as well as boardwalk-related expenses for police patrols, maintenance and minor infrastructure projects, plus an annual cash distribution to the three towns amounting to about $250,000 each, Rose said.

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Greater Wildwoods Improvement, Tourism and Development Authority

6. One-day events that lead to longer stays

A common strategy for towns up and down the shore is to hold a series of events, often free, intended to attract first-times visitors who might then decide to come back for a weekend getaway or a full-fledged vacation, which are much more lucrative for the area's hotels, restaurants, retail shops and municipal coffers.

"My favorite event of the entire year is the New Jersey State Barbecue Championship and Anglesea Blues Festival," held in July, said Ben Rose of the GWITDA. "We try to get them in for a first-time trial and hopefully they like what they see and at least consider us for a vacation. I think we have more events than any other Jersey Shore destination by far."

In Seaside Heights, the annual lineup of free movies on the beach is also consistent with the borough's family-friendly marketing campaign.

"Bring the whole family!" a Seaside Heights facebook post advised would-be visitors last summer. "On August 13th, join us for a showing of Despicable Me 2!!"

This year's lineup is all Disney films.

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Mode Architects

7. Approving tourist-friendly development

Typically, developers in shore towns also want to attract visitors, and work with local officials to plan and promote their projects.

In Seaside Heights, for example, developer Seaside Ocean Terrace LLC is planning a pool complex on a vacant lot at the borough's southern end. The project, approved by the borough this month, would be a long-awaited replacement for a tavern that was destroyed by a boardwalk fire in 2013 that also claimed 50 businesses in neighboring Seaside Park. L

The complex will offer day and season-long cabana rentals, and like borough officials, the developer hopes to attract families.

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NJN

8. Playing up history and architecture

The Wildwoods have exploited their kitsch appeal, promoting the concentration of close to 100 motels and motor lodges built in the over-the-top Doo-Wop style typical of 1950s and '60s beach resorts.

Although dozens of structures have been demolished and the remaining stock has been diluted by a condo boom, the area's historical significance has been officially recognized by state preservation officials as the Wildwoods Shore Resort Historic District, promoted by the Greater Wildwoods Improvement, Tourism and Development Authority, as well as the non-profit DooWop Preservation Society.

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Video by Steve Strunsky | NJ Advance Media

9. Coordinating with private businesses

Marketing the shore is done by both the public and private sectors.

In the case of Seaside Heights, the city's appeal to families dovetails with outreach by Casino Pier, a boardwalk amusement park that became a visual symbol of Hurricane Sandy's destructive force in 2012, with the image of an entire roller coaster seemingly washed out to sea.

In 2017, Casino Pier finally opened a new roller coaster, as well as a 130-foot Ferris wheel, and will follow-up this summer on last year's campaign that introduced the new rides, said Lou Cirigliano, the pier's operations manager.

"Last year, we built our new pier, so we absolutely focused on that," Cirigliano said. "So this year, we're saying "Come back to Seaside Heights ad see all the things you haven't seen before.'"

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So, what does shore tourism do for taxpayers?

Northern New Jersey cities like Hoboken, Jersey City and Newark tout their nightlife and cultural institutions. But it's the Jersey Shore that is synonymous with tourism in the Garden State, with four Atlantic Coast counties accounting for roughly half of all tourism spending statewide.

Monmouth, Ocean, Atlantic and Cape May counties accounted for $20.25 billion, or 48.3 percent, of the state's total year-round tourism spending of $40.9 billion in 2016, according to the New Jersey Division of Travel and Tourism.

The state's shore-dominated tourism industry accounts for 6.5 percent of New Jersey's gross domestic product, and one out of every 10 jobs, according to a 2017 report by Tourism Economics, a global marketing firm.

Even for New Jerseyans who never go to the shore to work or play, tourism has a significant impact on their lives, or at least on their bottom line, having generated $4.9 billion in state tax revenues in 2016, Tourism Economics reported.



"Without the tourism industry, New Jersey households would each need [to] pay $1,525 in order to maintain the current level of state and local government services," stated the report.

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Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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