Tourism campaigns Archives - Page 36 of 55

For Fun: Frankly Franklin with Frank Franklin Personifies Franklin, Tennessee

July 10, 2018 by Laurie Jo Miller Farr Leave a Comment

In the food industry, personified brand icons are everywhere. There’s the Pillsbury Doughboy, Jolly Green Giant, Tony the Tiger, Colonel Sanders and Ronald McDonald. Beyond food, there’s Mr. Clean, the talking Geico gecko, the sexy Old Spice Man and “The Most Interesting Man in the World” for Dos Equis.

So, why not create a personality for a destination?

Meet Frank Franklin, star of the quirky new Visit Franklin video series. Frankly, there’s no mistaking his small town charm as he hits the streets. Each of 15 videos in the cute and shareable, snackable series answers a burning, frequently asked question, such as “How did Franklin get its name?” and “Where’s a public restroom?”

More on the strategy from CrowdRiff here.

Watch here.

Meet a Cable Car Gripman: Real Faces of Locals Featured as DMO Launches ‘I Am San Francisco’

June 24, 2018 by Laurie Jo Miller Farr Leave a Comment

Steal this idea and make it your own?

We all know that meet-the-locals is a tried and true approach to destination marketing when it’s well done. On the heels of “You’re Always Welcome Here,” San Francisco is putting the accent on inclusivity and diversity.

Meet Ellis “Coach” Cato, a gripman on the signature cable cars that climb this city’s crazy hills on a ride where he says, “the magic happens.”

Born and bred in San Francisco, Cato (pictured below with his son, Ellis Cato III) is one of the nine local ambassadors who share a personal and professional story in “I Am San Francisco,” the second phase of SF Travel’s “You Are Always Welcome” campaign.

Individual stories are rolled out weekly, told in photos, video, text, and audio. And each ends by telling the viewer, “I am San Francisco and you are always welcome.” The campaign was developed in partnership with Brenton Gieser and Felix Uribe, creators of the Tender Souls Project, a photo documentary project.

The first phase of SF Travel’s digital messaging (see The Travel Vertical, Jan. 23, 2018) spread itself internationally via partnerships with Visit California and the three other California gateways: Los Angeles, San Diego and Anaheim.

“Our first phase addressed the visitor directly to assure them that, no matter where they come from or how they live, they are always welcome here. We wanted to distance ourselves from the rhetoric coming out of the capital,” said San Francisco Travel Association President and CEO Joe D’Alessandro. “Phase two is from the local’s perspective, presenting why San Francisco is the place for them and, by extension, for everyone.”

Read the SF Travel “I Am San Francisco” press release here and meet Ellis “Coach” Cato here.

Scooping Up Awards: Destination Pride Reimagines Rainbow Flag as Digital Dynamic

June 24, 2018 by Laurie Jo Miller Farr Leave a Comment

What if each stripe on the rainbow pride flag could tell the acceptance story of a destination? A clever idea from PFLAG Canada is running away with awards, including 19 wins (three gold) at Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity for the Toronto-based creative team at agency FCB/Six.

“Destination Pride” is a data-driven digital platform that allows LGBT travelers to gauge the safety of any given country based on its equality laws. Each destination is scored on six factors; the results are brought to life in a dynamic graphic using the flags stripes as a bar graph.

“For LGBTQ+ travelers, what’s legal in one place can be punishable by prison, or worse, in the next. That’s why we created DestinationPride.org. Users can search any town, city, province, state or country on earth. Our algorithm then calculates six key measures of acceptance, such as marriage equality, sexual activity laws and real-time social media sentiment. It then generates a Pride flag visualization based on the data. Each visualization provides a quick snapshot, and point of comparison for how far a destination is on its journey to LGBTQ+ acceptance, says PFLAG Canada.

Execution and Outcome

The current iteration of DestinationPride.org has been in development for more than 18 months, and was market-tested across three distinct prototypes: June 2017 – Beta; January 2018 – Version 1.0 and campaign launch; April 2018 – Version 2.0.

The initial launch was supported by PR and a global ad campaign including 100-plus unique Facebook campaigns running in 92 countries and 46 languages. Each of these targeted local LGBTQ+ communities and contained unique creative features using that country’s flag with contextual messaging based on region-specific insights.

The team logged more than 5,000 hours creating, developing, and refining DestinationPride.org and its campaign materials toward the goal of drawing attention to global inequalities with massive impact by users in 156 countries of the world’s 195 countries, as well as new calls-to-action and partnership interest from local community and major global travel brands.

+85,000 destinations searched and flags generated
+135 pieces of media coverage
58.52% of users engaged via mobile
1,226% increase in social mentions of PFLAG Canada during campaign period

See the case study video here.

The Very Best: Oregon, Tennessee, and Nashville CVB Collect Creativity Awards at Cannes Lions Festival

June 24, 2018 by Laurie Jo Miller Farr Leave a Comment

Congratulations to Travel Oregon, Tennessee Department of Tourist Development and Nashville Convention & Visitors Bureau for an impressive sweep of Silver Awards at this month’s 65th Annual International Festival of Creativity in Cannes, France.

Travel Oregon: The Game
Agency: Weiden + Kennedy, Portland
Silver Award

The Brief: “We needed a way to send Oregonians around the state during the slow tourist season, so we created a video game that would do just that. It was an homage to the classic computer game, The Oregon Trail, but updated with over 20 mini-games designed to showcase the many winter activities and vacation spots around Oregon. (See The Travel Vertical, Nov. 8, 2017.)

Games included everything from downhill skiing and snowshoeing to pretending to be a sommelier and checking IDs at a bar. Perils on the journey included Oregon-centric jokes such as overdosing on kombucha or dying from caffeine withdrawal. Media partners included Hulu, Discovery, Pandora, Reddit, Undertone, Zefr, and BuzzFeed plus Atlas Obscura, Expedia, and TripAdvisor.”

In case you missed Travel Oregon: The Game, here it is.

Nashville Convention & Visitors Bureau: “It All Begins with a Song”
Agency: VML Kansas City
Silver Award

The Brief: “Prove that Nashville is America’s only music city by telling the story in a way no other city could tell. ‘It All Begins with a Song’ brings one of music’s most important, and most unknown forces into the spotlight: The songwriter––because in a world of homogenizing metropolises, it’s these unsung talents that truly make Nashville special. This full-length documentary with 49 interviews goes behind the performers to the Nashville people who create the songs you know and love, featuring both up-and-comers and greats who have turned Nashville into the world’s songwriting capital. “It All Begins With a Song” debuted at the Country 2 Country music festival and is now a documentary film.”

Watch a clip here.

Tennessee Department of Tourist Development: “The Colorblind Viewer”
Agency: VML Kansas City
Silver Award

Recent years have seen the state’s “One Minute Vacation,” “Tennessee Vacation Matchmaker,” (see The Travel Vertical, Aug. 15, 2016) and “Snap Your Way In,” (see The Travel Vertical, Aug. 8, 2017) among other campaigns, scoop up trophies from the world’s most prestigious creative communications event. Now they’ve done it again.

The Brief: “Roughly 13 million Americans have never seen fall foliage colors because they suffer from red-green color blindness. So we wondered, what if Tennessee could be the place they saw the true colors of fall for the first time? To make it possible, we got help from an optometrist, a technology company, and an engineer to outfit classic scenic viewers with special lenses that alleviate red-green color deficiency. The Colorblind Viewers were permanently installed at three of the state’s best scenic vistas. As colorblind people used them, and witnessed the red and orange glory of fall for the first time, we captured their emotional reactions for a short film to share the experience, posting it online an distributing it to national media outlets.

Execution: Because of the limited window of fall foliage, we promoted to 21-to-54-year-olds within short driving distance of Tennessee, with secondary targeting to people with colorblind-related search history. Thousands of people came for the experience before the leaves fell, with many more already planning their trip for next year.

Outcome: As video views quickly reached 9 million, the story became national news with features on The Associated Press, NBC Nightly News and ABC News resulting in 662 million earned impressions and $2.5 million in earned media value. As the news traveled, so did people. In the weeks following the campaign, hotel revenue near viewer locations was up 9.5 percent over the previous year. And an indication of the cultural impact, the public even began lobbying for the viewers to be installed in other states and parks across the country. As a result, Tennessee is currently working on a manufacturing process to make that possible. What started as an innovative advertising idea, turned into a life-changing product that will now make the beautiful landscape of America inclusive to more people.”