Leisure/Tourism Marketing Campaign

Entries

Visit Georgetown

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Description:

The “We Call It Georgetown” Campaign is an evolution from the “Daytripper” campaign that employed local resident and regional personality Chet Garner as the face of Visit Georgetown. Chet served as an ideal spokesperson for the community prior to and post COVID. As travel returned to the area, Georgetown needed to connect beyond its immediate drive-market and engage potential visitors. Thus, “We Call It Georgetown” was born.

In the spring of 2023, we began working with our creative team to develop a new comprehensive campaign. In the strategic planning phase, we identified additional target markets, pinpointed the persuasive idea for the campaign, and defined our desired marketing objectives. Through this initial planning period, we also established a list of requirements that would be paramount to meeting our objectives.

The most pressing requirement was a photoshoot. No in-market shoot had been conducted in the last decade, and our available photos did not align with our chosen design aesthetic. The resulting three-day shoot was diligently coordinated to focus on real, vibrant lifestyle moments with local talent, community hot spots, and visitor venues.

With a curated suite of photos, we refined ad layouts to incorporate the new imagery, created custom iconography for print and digital assets, crafted impactful messaging, and enhanced typography to elevate Visit Georgetown’s new look and feel. One year after the initial creative brainstorming, the “We Call It Georgetown” campaign launched with a variety of marketing materials, including print and digital ads, a visitor’s guide, a dining trifold, a kid’s guide, a monthly newsletter template, a website refresh, social media assets, and light pole banners.

The campaign has received positive feedback city-wide, and the first digital campaign showed a 58% increase in click-through rates for native ads and a 67% increase for social media ads.

Objectives:

Transition from a “celebrity-persona” campaign to a more universally appealing, less niche-based place-making campaign.

Increase awareness of Georgetown as a destination that exceeds all your needs and offers exactly what you are seeking – i.e. a girl’s weekend, a meeting locale, a date night.

Build positive perceptions of Georgetown internally and externally through community and partner engagement, including photography, monthly eblasts, ad campaigns and out-of-home signage.

Project Costs:
$15,000 - Graphic Design
$18,000 - Photography

Visit Grand Prairie

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Description: Visit Grand Prairie hosted the ICC Men's T20 World Cup this June, hosting four matches at the Grand Prairie Stadium and watch parties at EpicCentral for six others including the finals match. The matches were attended by thousands of cricket fans from across North America, with hundreds attending watch parties. The success of the events can be attributed to Visit Grand Prairie's comprehensive marketing strategy. Through a well-executed social media campaign, targeted digital and print advertisements, strategic local partnerships, and a user-friendly website landing page, we were able to effectively promote the tournament and attract many cricket fans to attend the sold out matches and watch parties.

Objectives: The key objectives of our campaign were to increase awareness, promote local watch parties, drive traffic to the event page, and generate excitement and anticipation. To achieve this, we implemented a multi-channel marketing strategy including targeted email campaigns, social media campaigns, and paid advertising. We also partnered with local influencers to promote the event and leveraged our network of contacts to spread the word.

We generated 203K impressions on social media, 30K pageviews on the event page, and hundreds attended multiple watch parties during June. Engagement rates increased significantly, with Facebook interactions increasing by 8.8% and Instagram interactions up by 745%. In addition, a 29.6% increase in website visitors and a 63.8% increase in views were recorded. This success was attributed to the comprehensive marketing strategy, which included leveraging influencers, running targeted ads, and engaging with customers. Overall, the campaign was a success and achieved its goals.

The success of the 2024 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup resulted in an estimated economic impact of more than 1.9 million to our local economy.Through sold out tickets sales, we know that 77% of all attendees were from out of state which resulted in positive revenue for our hotels, restaurants, car rental facilities, attractions and more!

Project Cost: $1000

Port Aransas Tourism Bureau & Chamber of Commerce

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Description: Find What You Need in Port A, a multi-channel marketing campaign, captivated and engaged target audiences throughout Austin with a unique blend of experiences and touchpoints, including an immersive mobile beach activation, eye-catching wildpostings, personalized itineraries, themed giveaways, on-site experiences, Hulu and Hopper advertising, and targeted campaigns on TikTok, Meta, and Snapchat. The in-market activation featured a branded glass truck that functioned as a mobile home base, moving throughout Austin over six days and playing host to an experiential photo opportunity. The truck also served as a distribution point for branded glass bottles containing prizes and a QR code leading to a landing page, where participants could take an interactive quiz to receive personalized Port Aransas itineraries tailored to their interests. The campaign drove an impressive 52.68% increase in new users to VisitPortAransas.com and a 64.37% increase in engaged sessions from the Austin DMA, resulting in 5,046 new users visiting the Find The Beach landing page, while achieving 1.7 million digital impressions and over 28 million total impressions.

Objectives: The campaign aimed to position Port A as Austin's go-to beach destination by increasing brand awareness and highlighting hotel and activity partners. This was achieved through engaging content, targeted advertising, and tracking key metrics like social media engagement and bookings. The comprehensive monitoring strategy ensured that the campaign's impact could be accurately measured and evaluated, ultimately driving traffic to local businesses and reinforcing Port A's messaging.

Project Costs: $221,000

In-house or Agency: Agency

https://www.portaransas.org/findthebeach/

Visit Shenandoah, TX

Description: Created and managed an integrated marketing campaign to drive visitation to our city. We used a variety of media channels.

Note: Refer to attached images for stats and creative samples.

Objectives:

- Raise awareness and profile for our destination and our partners.

- Drive traffic to our website.

- Drive hotel room nights.

Project Costs: Approx: $300,000-$350,000 for media.

https://houston.culturemap.com/news/travel/07-20-2...
This Season is a Great Time to Visit Shenandoah, Texas – Texas Monthly

In-house or Agency: Agency

Visit McKinney

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Description: In Fall 2024, we decided to produce a city-wide Visitors Guide after years of using the Downtown McKinney Shoppers Guide as our Visitors Guide. We opted to partner with Texas Monthly. After months of back-and-forths with their design team, a visit from a photographer, and gathering high quality photos from our local restaurant and retail partners, we launched the guide in February 2024. To promote the new guide, we ran a digital ad campaign with Texas Monthly and promoted the new Visitors Guide in our Spring and Summer Travel Planners with them. We also had a local videographer produce a video for social media and our kiosk out in front of the Visitors Center. The rack card we’d been using to send people to our website was updated to drive people to our digital Visitors Guide, a page in our website where they can also order a hard copy of the booklet.

Objectives: McKinney has grown tremendously in the past couple of years with two new entertainment districts outside of the historic downtown which is our main entertainment district. Producing a city-wide Visitors Guide was necessary to promote McKinney as a whole. The book was very well received by our partners and our visitors are loving it. Traffic to our Visitors Guide page has greatly increased as a result of changing from the Downtown Shoppers Guide to the city-wide guide, and due to our digital campaigns driving traffic there. Now as we head into Fall event marketing season, we are using data from Zartico to run ads promoting the Visitors Guide in our top origin markets. Views of our website visitors guide from launch in June 2021 to the day before the new visitor (Jan. 31, 2024) was 3451. From Feb. 1, 2024 to June 26, 2024 (not quite five months), visits to that page number 5744. That’s a 66% increase in almost five months over the traffic from no quite three full years.

Project Costs: $50,000 total, but Visit McKinney paid $26,603 for production of the Visitors Guide and delivery of 20,000 copies. Advertising sold by the Texas Monthly team covered the remaining amount.

In-house or Agency: Agency

https://issuu.com/tm_studio/docs/mckinney_2024_dig...

Amarillo Convention & Visitors Bureau

Description: The Texas Route 66 Festival was founded as an initiative to garner excitement for the upcoming centennial of Route 66 in 2026. The 10-day festival features a culmination of events throughout The Heart of the Mother Road that celebrate all things Texas and Route 66. Visit Amarillo coordinated with over 60 partners to develop 10 days' worth of exciting events. See details on how Visit Amarillo worked with area parents to create one of USA Today's Best New Festivals of 2024 by following this link - https://shorturl.at/rkzMo

Objectives:

Increase average length of stay
Introduce younger audience to Route 66 | >40
Raise awareness of Texas Route 66
Connect area partners and inspire collaboration
Position Amarillo as a top stop for Route 66 Travelers

See more details and results at https://shorturl.at/rkzMo

Project Costs: $70,000

In-house or Agency: Agency

Visit San Marcos

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Description: To reduce litter in the San Marcos River, the City of San Marcos implemented a new ordinance banning single-use beverage containers, effective May 1, 2024. Visit San Marcos was tasked with creating a campaign educating visitors on the new ordinance in a fun, memorable way that didn’t present the river as a “trashy” place to play. With a few dozen googly eyes, fake eyelashes, a ton of hot glue, and a zany idea, Visit San Marcos’ Reuse at the River campaign was born. The Reuse at the River campaign was primarily distributed via digital and social media ads. The first half of the campaign has garnered 1,098,472 impressions and has a 7.17 click through rate, which is impressive for a PSA campaign.

Objectives: The main campaign objective was to focus on educating past river visitors on the new rule. We also wanted to keep the campaign light-hearted and playful, without creating an atmosphere of blame for the litter or portraying the San Marcos River as full of trash.

Project Costs: $29,500 for video creation, digital ads, and social media campaigns.

In-house or Agency: In-house

Beaumont Convention & Visitor's Bureau

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Description: The Beaumont Mural Festival is a premier, multi-day event showcasing the transformative power of public art. Featuring over 20 artists, including a distinguished group of 4 international talents, the festival enriched Beaumont's cultural landscape with a remarkable 17 new murals added to the city's permanent collection in 2024. Beyond aesthetics, the festival fosters community engagement through a collaborative day with the local school district, emphasizing the vital role of arts education. This impactful initiative underscores the Beaumont Mural Festival's commitment to artistic vibrancy and its enduring legacy within the city.

Objectives:
Increase Visitation and Visitor Spending

Enhance Beaumont's Image as an Arts and Culture Destination

Foster Community Engagement

Develop Strategic Partnerships

Project Costs: $100,000

In-house or Agency: In-house

Visit Lubbock

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Description: Our Family-Friendly in Lubbock Campaign targeted families through digital ads and Visit Lubbock's social media channels, aiming to attract a niche audience for the spring and summer seasons. In collaboration with Local LBK, the second part of our campaign showcased how to experience Lubbock like a local, highlighting family-friendly activities and destinations.

Objectives: Our main goal was to attract and engage young families, particularly parents, by showcasing local family-friendly activities and destinations through targeted digital ads and social media. This campaign was one of our most successful ones this year! Using Google responsive display ads run by Madden Media, the campaign generated 1.1 million impressions and 48,517 clicks, resulting in a 4.4% click-through rate. Out of 18,468 users, 44% engaged in sessions, totaling 8,083 sessions with an average duration of 2 minutes. Additionally, there were 7,448 key event conversions. The campaign primarily reached female parents aged 25-44, with the highest engagement from Dallas, Phoenix, Houston, Denver, Austin, and San Antonio. In our social media partnership with Local LBK our video “Visit Lubbock Like a Local - Family-Friendly Edition” reached 6,265 accounts with a total of 13,500 views and over 14 hours of watch time.

Project Costs: $15,000

In-house or Agency: In-house

Visit South Padre Island

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Description: With data showing that visitors from the Midwest had longer length of stays and a higher average spend, South Padre Island planned and executed a marketing campaign to further drive awareness and visitation with this audience during the shoulder season. In the late summer and fall months of 2023, SPI invited Midwesterners to “Escape the Everyday” in South Padre Island. This all-digital approach included programmatic display, retargeting, native, and paid social, while narrowly focusing in on a niche audience in Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Detroit, Fargo, Minneapolis, Chicago, Toronto and Winnipeg. The campaign was so successful, it was extended to run the entire fiscal year.

Objectives:
- Increase awareness of South Padre Island among a target audience in the Midwest US, measured through digital impressions.

- Increase visitation of Midwest Visitors during the shoulder season.

- Monitor, track, analyze, and optimize digital marketing efforts to consistently improve communications and increase conversions to drive visits/booking.

Results: The Midwest campaign garnered over 3.7 million impressions and an engagement rate to the website of 0.14%, 40% above the benchmark. In addition, the campaign drove 1,019 guest reservations with an average Midwestern average guest ADR of $211.61.

Project Costs: $100,000

In-house or Agency: Agency

Visit Plano

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Description: With Plano, TX on the path of totality for the April 8, 2024 solar eclipse, Visit Plano took the lead on coordinating efforts to promote Plano as a stand-out destination to view the eclipse. Visit Plano developed an Eclipse Task Force with members of key City departments, then developed and executed a robust marketing plan which included:

- Eclipse landing page

- Eclipse Plano hotel discounts blog post

- Promotional rack card & posters delivered to hotels & key city facilities and venues

- Eclipse-specific ads in Astronomy Magazine and Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine

- Hosted travel journalist, Rebecca Rhoades on assignment for AZ Big Media and hotel-scoop.com to highlight Plano as an ideal viewing destination.

- Gave away 25,000 eclipse viewing glasses in the Visit Plano Visitor Center and to Plano hotels.

- From March 18-29, 2024, Visit Plano held a special eclipse contest where visitors entering the Visitor Center could digitally opt-in on the Visit Plano website to a drawing for a Visit Plano picnic basket complete with all the eclipse-viewing essentials ($300 value).

Plano saw an estimated 227,000 visitors in Plano on April 8th. Plano hotel occupancy for Sunday, April 7, 2024 was 83.1% (up 76% from the week prior) and occupancy for Monday, April 8, 2024 was 88.1% (up 36% from the week prior). Visit Plano saw over a 70% increase in website traffic the day of the total solar eclipse and a 44% increase the day before the eclipse.

Objectives: For the target audience outside of DFW, the goal was to promote Plano as an ideal weekend stay for the Monday midday eclipse viewing and for those visitors to book a hotel room in Plano. For the DFW & Plano target market, the goal was to promote the two official viewing locations and other related eclipse events. A secondary goal was to encourage locals who had family visiting for the event to take advantage of Plano hotel offers.

Project Costs: $39,160.50

In-house or Agency: In-house

Waco Convention & Visitors Bureau

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Description: The CVB executed a new campaign this year in March to provide a way for Spring at the Silos and spring break visitors to easily visit Waco’s other attractions. Research had indicated that many of the visitors who come for the Magnolia event don’t venture beyond the Silo District, so we worked with local tour companies to provide free shuttle service from the Magnolia area to other attractions. We promoted the campaign on our home page and through our social media using boosted posts driving traffic to the detailed landing page on our website and shared the information with key attraction partners. We also used QR codes on banners at each shuttle stop that led to a landing page to our website. We executed the program in a way that allows us to easily re-implement the shuttle service for other future events in the community.

Objectives: We utilized boosted posts on social media to reach visitors and had the following results: post impressions - 22,286; post reach - 13,377; engagement - 1,752; reactions - 225; link clicks - 221; other clicks - 1,275

Project Costs: $167 for Meta ads

In-house or Agency: In-house

Abilene Convention & Visitors Bureau

Description: CAMPAIGN TITLE: Authentically Abilene

The ""Authentically Abilene"" campaign was created to highlight the unique charm and genuine appeal of Abilene, Texas. By focusing on the word ""authentic,"" this campaign emphasizes the true, down-home nature of the city, showcasing its rich traditions, vibrant sense of community, and welcoming atmosphere. Visitors to Abilene are invited to immerse themselves in enriching experiences that capture the essence of the city's heritage and culture. Whether exploring historic landmarks, enjoying local cuisine, or attending an event, every aspect of Abilene reflects an authenticity that makes the city a distinctive and memorable destination.

Objectives: CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES:

Promote Local Culture and Heritage: To emphasize the rich cultural heritage and history of Abilene through various activities and events that showcase the city's unique traditions and stories.

Enhance Visitor Engagement: To provide engaging and authentic experiences that encourage visitors to connect deeply with the local community and culture.

Increase Tourism: To attract more visitors to Abilene by highlighting its authentic charm and the variety of genuine experiences available.

Support Local Businesses: To boost the local economy by promoting Abilene's small businesses, artisans, and local attractions that contribute to the city's authentic character.

PRINT ADVERTISING:

Eye-catching billboards placed strategically in target markets

Print advertising in travel magazines and local publications highlighting Abilene’s authentic attractions and events.

DIGITAL MARKETING:

Social Media Campaign: Utilize engaging content, including photos to showcase Abilene’s authentic experiences on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Targeted Google Ad Placements: Implement strategic ad placements to reach potential visitors searching for authentic travel experiences, ensuring high visibility and engagement.

Project Costs: $35,000

In-house or Agency: In-house

Leisure/Tourism Marketing Campaign - $1 Million and Over

Entries

Visit Georgetown

Visit Grand Prairie

Port Aransas Tourism Bureau & Chamber of Commerce

Visit Shenandoah, TX

Visit McKinney

Amarillo Convention & Visitors Bureau

Visit San Marcos

Beaumont Convention & Visitor's Bureau

Visit Lubbock

Visit South Padre Island

Visit Plano

Waco Convention & Visitors Bureau

Abilene Convention & Visitors Bureau

2024 - Leisure/Tourism Marketing Campaign - Over $1 Million