4 ways that Utah is hooking tourists with creative campaigns

By working with the right creative partners Utah Office of Tourism is boosting incremental tourism

With a tourism industry worth $7.8 billion, Utah Office of Tourism places great emphasis on running successful creative campaigns.

But what makes a great campaign? Jay Kinghorn, Director of Communications & Digital Strategy for the Utah Office of Tourism shares some advice.

1. Begin with a clear, differentiating hook delivered in an engaging, entertaining way

“The effectiveness of the hook needs to be carried through the execution of all the elements in the campaign, from the creation of the advertising assets, to the media buy and inclusive of the larger marketing and communications initiatives,” he says.

2. Make an emotional connection with the viewer

For 30 years the tourism body has worked with a creative agency on its travel campaigns. It recently renewed what it views as an important strategic partnership that is integral to growing Utah tourism with Struck and media buying agency, Love Communications. This creative duo has worked with Utah tourism on two award-winning campaigns namely summer’s Mighty 5 and winter’s Find Your Greatest. According to Kinghorn the aim above all else is to make an emotional connection with the viewer as this drives more visits. Both campaigns boosted incremental tourism by 30% and 7.4% respectively.

3. Use owned media channels wisely

It is important to ensure that you have great content across all owned media channels such as websites and social media which, says Jeremy Chase, Director of Client Services at Struck, have become outposts for great content. This can be created by a marketing team or by travellers wanting to share personal stories.

To this end, the Utah body has recently started to focus more on social media, which is integral to any successful campaign, and has recently expanded its efforts by appointing Pandemic Labs Inc, a social media agency.

“So far we have focused on using social media to converse with travellers and encourage them to share their vacation photos which is crucial for inspiring future visitors,” says Kinghorn.

Next steps here include: expanding existing social engagement and adding social advertising to connect niche travel content with targeted audiences.

4. Measure for success

With the rise of the millennial traveller and the popularity of digital channels, one of the big challenges for marketers today is ad-blocking.

“At the highest level,” says Kinghorn, “we use Strategic Marketing and Research Inc (SMARI) to conduct an ad effectiveness study at the beginning and end of each campaign.”

SMARI provides Utah Office of Tourism with the number of ad aware households as well as incremental travel inspired by an ad campaign.

“We share this study with our Governor's office and State Legislature as part of our agency's effectiveness measures,” he adds.

Internally, many individual components of a campaign are measured. These include conventional measures including website visits, email newsletter leads, click-through-rate, travel guide requests and so on.

Additionally, the tourism office created several new metrics including cost-per-minute of engagement (CPMOE) that allows them to measure individual components of their digital media buy, the efficacy of landing pages and digital creative. “This is emerging as a powerful tool for us to optimise our digital efforts,” he concludes.

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