The Borough With Everything — Including A Very Viable Candidate For Some Higher Office

Adolfo Carrión Jr.’s Pataki-esque new ads let everyone know the good news about the Bronx’s fine hospitals:

Television viewers in the New York region will learn about a new and intriguing tourist destination this month. It is an exotic land the size of Paris, an urban retreat that gave the world not only hip-hop but also Billy Joel, and is home to a zoo, a baseball stadium and a jeer disguised as a cheer.

The Bronx.

A series of television commercials promoting the borough of 1.3 million will be on the airwaves starting June 25. The 30-second spots, the first television advertisements the Bronx has used to sell itself, are part of a marketing campaign called “We’re Talking the Bronx,” starring Adolfo Carrión Jr., the borough president.

. . .

The ads will run for nine weeks on cable networks including CNN and ESPN in parts of the Bronx, Manhattan and Westchester County. They could be seen by roughly one million viewers, according to Weinrib & Connor, the White Plains advertising agency that produced the commercials.

The spots promoting one of New York City’s grittier boroughs give the place a rather old-fashioned, small-town feel. A fiddle plays pleasantly in the background as Mr. Carrión and others smile at the camera, though the borough’s homegrown musical legacies include hip-hop, doo-wop and salsa.

In one ad, an unidentified representative of Woodlawn Cemetery, one of the financial sponsors of the campaign, stares into the camera and says: “Whether preplanning or at a time of need, come talk with us.”

In others, viewers are whisked from the borough’s Little Italy on Arthur Avenue to the blue-backed seats of Yankee Stadium to the interior of North Central Bronx Hospital, “the hospital of choice for the Norwood community.” There are shots of Mike’s Deli on Arthur Avenue and the eager staff of a Ridgewood Savings Bank branch.

. . .

Mr. Carrión said the goal of the campaign was to generate more tourism to the borough, which attracted about seven million visitors last year. The ads also raise the profile of Mr. Carrión, who is considered a possible candidate for mayor in 2009.

When asked if the ads would help his political future, he said yesterday: “Every time I wake up in the morning and do my job right, it helps me to do whatever I’m going to do next.”