Prior to 2012, the state of New Mexico didn’t have a cohesive tourism marketing strategy. Its tourism department focused mostly on providing administrative services and support for its regional destination marketing organizations.

But that all began to change with the election of Governor Susana Martinez in 2011, who challenged the department to shift their focus towards initiatives that provided a greater return on investment, primarily, marketing their destination as a whole. Since that time the organization has evolved from a support system to its own tourism and economic activity powerhouse.

Starting Point: Understanding Incorrect Impressions of New Mexico

The first step in that transition was to conduct focus groups and research in order to understand the impression held about New Mexico in key markets. According to the tourism department’s Cabinet Secretary, Rebecca Latham, the results weren’t flattering.

“What they thought about New Mexico, if they thought about New Mexico at all, was wrong. To them New Mexico was a dry, barren, desert wasteland, which was tough to hear.”

To make matters worse, the tourism department gathered all of the state’s DMOs and had them present their marketing approach. “It was total clutter and chaos,” Latham said, adding that the messaging varied widely between neighboring cities and towns.

With a mandate that now dedicated three quarters of the annual budget to marketing, the New Mexico Tourism Department began their rebranding effort in 2012. The goal was to unify the various campaigns, change the perception of New Mexico as a tourism destination and also inspire pride amongst the local population.

In a direct nod to the many misconceptions about the state, its tourism department united regional marketing efforts under a new banner: New Mexico True.

New Mexico True: Inspiring Pride and Unity within the State

“With New Mexico True we were able to provide templates and uniformity where smaller destinations can leverage the New Mexico True brand, and then those budgets help drive impressions for all of us,” said Latham, adding that the state has invested approximately $35 million into developing the brand since 2012, alongside another eight to ten million provided by industry partners.

Then, in 2014, the New Mexico Tourism Board elected to create content of its own, educating potential visitors about various niche activities while encouraging New Mexicans to explore their home state further.

“We felt the stronger approach was to make New Mexicans have this overwhelming sense of pride, so not only would they keep their vacation dollars in state but they’d invite their friends and family to come and visit.”

Video Storytelling with New Mexico True Stories

S o in 2014 the tourism board published its first video in a series called New Mexico True Stories, profiling local champion MMA fighter Carlos Condit.

“The original attempt was to profile the people and passion that you can’t find anywhere else but New Mexico in these one to three minute video profiles,” said Latham.

“As the series has evolved it’s taken on a completely different purpose, which is to brand the state within these niche audiences as a destination for high altitude training, or unique culinary events, or bird watching or fly fishing or extreme skiing.”

Since that first profile the tourism department has produced 12 high quality videos, each focusing on a niche interest or unique attribute of the state with a distinctively cinematic feel. Latham explains that the format was the brainchild of their creative agency partner, Talweg Creative, which was also responsible for sourcing profile subjects.

The instructions passed onto the creative agency required them to meet three criteria in each video:

1. Is the subject proprietary?
2. Does it speak to a niche interest that will motivate travel?
3. Will it also inspire local pride and advocacy?

One instalment titled Aunt June profiles a 93 year-old green chile farmer from Hatch, New Mexico, which Latham describes as the Napa Valley of chile. While most of the videos are promoted on social targeting niche interest groups, Aunt June didn’t need any extra buzz.

“Before one penny went into promoting it, New Mexicans just blew it up. It has this outrageous engagement on social media because it’s such a point of pride for New Mexicans.”

Aunt June has been viewed 1.68 million times, with nearly half a million engagements on Facebook alone. Thus far New Mexico True Stories has achieved just under 12 million total views. Coupled with other efforts under the New Mexico True banner, Latham has reason to believe it’s had a real impact on both economic activity and combating misconceptions about the state.

How New Mexico True Has Changed Tourism in the State

“Over the past six years we’ve seen remarkable increases in the amount of visitors to New Mexico, and the amount of money they’re spending,” she said. “We’ve gone from about 5.1 billion to 6.3 billion since the launch of the New Mexico True brand.”

The New Mexico Tourism Department also recently participated in a halo effect study to measure how the campaign is changing the overall perception of the state.

“Overwhelmingly, people who had an awareness of New Mexico True advertising had a higher likelihood of having a better perception of New Mexico as a place to do business, go to college, relocate, buy a second home or retire.”

Latham adds, “We know we are having a huge impact on perceptions of New Mexico as more than just a place for a vacation, but as a place to invest and relocate.”

While the New Mexico True campaign has been a success Latham says there was a lot of political pressure at the start as a result of the significant investment made by the state. She explains that such pressure can be detrimental to the creative process, as the best ideas typically require a little bit of risk taking.

“I would say trust your gut, and don’t be scared to try something different,” she advises, adding that the value of a strong creative agency partner cannot be overstated.

This article was first published on the CrowdRiff blog on August 29th.

#NewMexicoTRUE: Sparking State Pride and Wanderlust with Video Storytelling was originally published in The Viewfinder on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge in Omaha is a very impressive structure — in both its architecture and especially in its quirky new personality.

The 3,000 foot curved suspension bridge is one of the first of its kind to connect two states, Nebraska and Iowa. Suspended by two large towers, the bridge dangles more than 50 feet above the Missouri River, providing spectacular views on both sides.

But people didn’t really understand this beautiful piece of urban architecture’s intended purpose when it first opened in September of 2008. The $22 million bridge was often referred to as “the bridge to nowhere,” drawing criticism for the lack of development where it ended in Iowa.

“Locals thought it was meant to be a bridge to something, but more and more have gone down there and realized it is the thing,” said Deborah Ward, the Vice President of Marketing for Visit Omaha. “It’s not supposed to take you from one place to the other; it’s the destination.”

Bringing Bob the Bridge to Life

Instead of hyping up the bridge’s own appeal, however, Ward decided that she was going to let the bridge speak for itself, literally.

“A bridge that you can Tweet with and Instagram with and talk back and forth with is something that no other city is doing, and it’s really hard to do something completely different. It was also risky because we didn’t know if it would work. Would people really engage with a bridge?”

In 2015 Ward and her team considered the sort of personality traits they wanted to give Bob the Bridge, describing him as “larger than life” with a dry tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and an honest, tell-it-like-it-is demeanor.

“I said I want him sort of edgy and fun. That was a way to start the creative process to build Bob’s personality.”

In 2016 Visit Omaha crafted a press release in the same tone introducing their newest resident, Bob the Bridge. “The media really responded very well to it,” said Ward.

She adds that in spite of the initial criticisms, Bob’s new personality — coupled with news of visitors travelling from far and wide to visit the bridge — changed locals’ perceptions of him as well.

How Bob the Bridge Won the Hearts of Locals and Visitors

Today the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, better known as Bob, is the host of an ongoing video blog, has his own Twitter and Instagram accounts and is prominently featured on Visit Omaha’s Facebook page.

It’s not just his online personality that’s gotten a lot of buzz, however. Bob’s real life visitors are also encouraged to interact with the bridge and post the experience on social media.

“Bob made up a term, ‘Bobbing,’ which is when you stand in two states at the same time and take a selfie,” said Ward. “We put a sign up at the state line, which crosses right through Bob, and we told people ‘it’s called Bobbing, trust us, it’s a thing.”

Visitors are then encouraged to post their photos using the hashtag #ItHappensOnBob. “We’ve had the Harlem Globetrotters, we’ve had the Rockettes, we’ve had all sorts of people Bobbing,” adds Ward.

To keep a two-way conversation going between Bob and his visitors, the marketing team at Visit Omaha makes sure he’s always responding to Bobbing travelers on social media. Using CrowdRiff, the team tracks and monitors new #ItHappensOnBob photos that pop up, and regularly send out tailored comments from the bridge himself.

Though he was introduced to the world nearly two years ago Visit Omaha continues to find new and interesting ways to keep the campaign fresh. Recently Visit Omaha introduced a 0.9-kilometer “marathon” across the length of the bridge. Visitors are encourage to take a selfie with Bob and present it to the Omaha Visitors Center to receive an official 0.9K marathon sticker:

“Since May we’ve had more than 550 people from at least 37 states come and get their marathon stickers.”

Leveraging User-Generated Content to Keep Bob’s Energy Alive and Exciting

The team curates their favorite social photos and videos from 0.9k marathon challengers and showcases them on Bob’s page of the Visit Omaha website. These user-generated visuals are updated regularly through CrowdRiff, so that interested visitors can see real-time photos of Bob and his fans at any given time.

Though he has less than 1,000 followers on Twitter and Instagram, a majority of them have been added since January. At the same time Bob’s video blog posts have been viewed over a million times, and he’s not slowing down his playful antics anytime soon. In fact, he recently asked San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge out on a date.

“Our Bob campaign is really resonating with people, we can see it in visual terms. That user-generated content is what keeps Bob alive, and helps us share his personality with others.”

Bob is quickly becoming a mainstay of Omaha’s tourism appeal. Can you imagine what’s next? Maybe a “Bob festival” where invitees might include Bob Dylan, Bob Saget, B.O.B, and perhaps even a special guest appearance by Jeff Bridges.

Bob thinks they may be related.

This article was originally published on the CrowdRiff blog on August 16, 2017.

Bob the Bridge: How Visit Omaha Turned a Pedestrian Bridge into a Local Celeb was originally published in The Viewfinder on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

From the grass growing beneath their feet to the flags flying above their head, everything in Lexington, Kentucky is dedicated to its horses.

It all relates back to the limestone shelf that sits under the state of Kentucky, which is credited for giving the grass its blue tinge and for helping its horse population develop strong bones. Located smack dab in the middle of bluegrass country sits a city that’s home to 450 horse farms, a statue of a famous horse that bears the city’s name, as well as about 8% of all history’s Kentucky Derby winners.

Lexington Kentucky, the Horse Capital of the World

Lexington Kentucky is so devoted to its horses that they’ve even put one on its flag, colored blue in a nod to the unique land they graze on.

“The city has totally adopted it,” says Gathan Borden, the Vice President of Marketing for Visit Lex. “We have a total love affair with horses.”

While Lexington is also home to a burgeoning craft beer and foodie culture, as well as just a short drive from just about every bourbon distillery in America, the “Horse Capital of the World” naturally tries to find ways to promote its own unique X factor.

Sharing the city’s love for its horses with outsiders — who may only have a casual relationship with horse racing — has always been a challenge, but Borden and his team recently devised a way to put audiences right in the saddle, and the result has been a clear winner.

“One of the trends that we’re trying to follow along with in tourism marketing across the board is how to get more personal with the end user of the video.”

He continued, “For us, right now, we’re into this content game where we’re using locals and influencers to tell the story of Lexington from a first-person point of view.”

This past February, however, Borden and his team decided to look to its city’s most famous influencers.

Turning the cameras over to Lexington’s thoroughbred horses

“We wanted people to know that horse farms are actually fun. Horses are really fun animals, so wouldn’t it be cool to see what a horse sees on its daily journey?” he said. “We thought it was a unique perspective you couldn’t get anywhere else in the world.”

After coming up with the concept Borden and his agency partners, Cornett, strapped GoPros to the horses at a local farm using harnesses originally designed for dogs, though he says they fit the horses surprisingly well. What resulted is a series of videos, published to their Facebook page in June, filmed entirely by horses.

The videos include some regular horse activities, like grazing and running through an open field, but one of the series’ four videos stands out to Borden the most. In it a young horse is seen jumping and running in circles around a horse-pen.

“That foal is actually being filmed by its mother. It might be a stretch, but travel is all about creating memories, and when families come they’re always filming their kids enjoying the destination, so having a mother horse film their offspring is pretty exciting for us.”

After publishing the videos to YouTube as well as Facebook, and promoting them with a modest social media campaign, they soon became one of Visit Lex’s most successful and least expensive projects to date.

Creating a big impact out of a smart spend

Borden says filming and editing totaled less than $9,000, plus an additional $5,000 spent promoting it through Facebook. When the first video was published it received over 167,000 views alone, with the entire campaign totaling more than 280,000 to date. As a point of comparison, Borden says a previous campaign of four videos cost over $32,000, and wasn’t nearly as successful.

The campaign also attracted the attention of local newspapers, including the Lexington Herald Leader, equestrian publications like HorseChannel.com and advertising industry publications like AdWeek.

“To me that shows that money is the last thing you should worry about. As long as you’ve got a good idea, that’s all you should worry about.”

Visit Lex’s next equestrian marketing ventures

Borden is hoping to follow up the latest campaign with something similarly simple and direct, again putting the viewer in the subject’s horseshoes, but hasn’t yet settled on exactly what that will look like.

“Maybe we film them in the fall and the winter time, the same horses, like we’re creating a trilogy of movies,” said Borden. The team has also considered 3D video, though the cameras are more difficult to stabilize on horseback than the GoPros.

Whatever which way Visit Lex decides to follow up their latest campaign, expect it to put the viewer in an immersive environment, riding along with the city’s most beloved residents.

This article was first published on the CrowdRiff blog on August 10, 2017.

How Visit Lex’s Horse-Filmed Commercials Became a Huge Success was originally published in The Viewfinder on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Some tourist destinations have to dig deep when promoting attractions that might lure visitors. New Orleans, on the other hand, has the opposite problem.

As one of the oldest cities in North America (New Orleans will celebrate its Tricentennial in 2018), the birthplace of Jazz, the home of Cajun and Creole traditions and the world famous Mardi Gras, New Orleans is the kind of destination whose main attractions need no awareness campaign.

But while the world famous hotspot continues to inspire visits to Bourbon Street, the French Quarter, and major events like the New Orleans Jazz Festival, some of the city’s approximately 10.5 million annual visitors often only scratch the surface of what it has to offer.

When the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation first launched its blog, GoNOLA.com in 2010, the goal was to capture the sights and sounds of the world’s most festive city and in a fun, quick, and conversational way.

“This city can be a sensory overload when you’re here, with the food and the music and the colors and the architecture and the history,” explained Jeremy Cooker, the Vice President of Marketing and Special Projects for the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation. “If you look back at [our first posts and the first videos in] the archive of GoNOLA’s YouTube channel, it looks like a[n] . . . approach of ‘let’s just capture as much as we possibly can.’”

Transforming GoNOLA into a True Insider’s Guide

Over the years, however, GoNOLA has matured from its humble roots as an archive of the city’s most famous attractions and events to an exploration of those sides of the city visitors are less likely to find on their own.

“GoNOLA allows us to peel the layers back a little bit for our visitors,” says Cooker.

The YouTube channel does provide one-minute guides to the Jazz Fest and a behind the scenes series on the making of Mardi Gras, but some of its most popular videos are those that touch on those lesser known part of New Orleans culture. Some of the most watched videos include a guide to eating crawfish, a tour of the city’s storied cemeteries and an explanation of the difference between Cajun and Creole cooking.

“There’s just a lot more to the city than some people realize,” says Cooker, adding that New Orleans is home to over 135 annual festivals, several of which are not commonly known outside of the city.

“The way we’ve presented GoNOLA is as somewhat of an insider’s guide: internally we talk about it as your cool friend who lives here and knows all the fun things that are going on.”

These videos, in other words, strive to equip potential visitors with a local’s depth of understanding so they can discover some of the city’s hidden gems before being lured to its handful of world-renowned attractions.

“In New Orleans we have an embarrassment of riches in terms of what people look for in a travel destination, there’s no shortage of content here, no shortage of things we can put out there,” explains Cooker.

“It’s just a matter of what’s going to make people lean in, sit up, and say ‘I want to see more of this.’”

Choosing Content to Create for GoNOLA

Deciding on which of those riches to hone in on, says Cooker, starts with a combination of audience feedback and the city’s events calendar.

The social and search teams present some of the most popular queries, search terms and questions they receive, coupled with upcoming festivals and events, and work with the editorial team to put together a production plan.

“We have a full team meeting every month with all the agency partners, search, social and our in-house editorial team, as well as our colleagues at the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau (NOCVB), and we all lay out what the month will look like,” explains Cooker, adding that the vision is ultimately brought to life by a local production team, Calm Dog Productions.

“I think there’s some inherent sense, internally, of whether it’s good enough if all of us want to share the video immediately with as many people as possible.”

Shipping GoNOLA Videos to Thousands of Followers

The videos are published on the GoNOLATV YouTube Channel, which has over 6,000 followers, and sometimes shared on New Orleans Tourism’s Facebook page, which has over half a million.

The videos are also promoted through the organization’s newsletters and paid social advertising. New Orleans-based social advertising agency FSC Interactive has managed GoNOLA and its video content on behalf of NOTMC for the past several years, in addition to managing NOTMC’s and NOCVB’s social channels.

Video viewership on GoNOLA’s YouTube channel, according to Cooker, can range from a few hundred to a few hundred thousand, but the less viral videos are often intended to tap into a more niche audience.

Their fun, playful videos have won them a 2017 VIZZI Award for best video storytelling.

“New Orleans is Built on Stories” — Future Endeavors

Cooker adds that while the GoNOLA videos have been very successful in the past viewers can expect big things starting in September, as the city prepares to celebrate its 300th birthday.

“New Orleans is built on 300 years of great stories, and we’re going to be inviting people to come and be part of that history, part of our story, and make New Orleans part of their story.”

Cooker acknowledges that while some other destinations may want to keep their stories within the destination, New Orleans opts to ask people to share and share often their experiences.

To give web visitors an authentic lens into these experiences, NOTMC is partnering with the New Orleans CVB to launch a brand new website in the fall at NewOrleans.com which will feature galleries of user-generated content made with CrowdRiff throughout.

“We want to keep showing the stuff we know people love, and showing the stuff people might not be aware of,” says Cooker. “There’s always something to explore here, so we’ve got a lot more to cover.”

This article was originally published on the CrowdRiff blog on July 19, 2017.

How New Orleans TMC Evolved Their Blog & YouTube Channel Into a True Insider’s Guide was originally published in The Viewfinder on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Luck doesn’t materialize independently. Luck only happens when one identifies and seizes an extraordinary opportunity that they could have just as easily missed.

So even though Brian Twomey, the Head of Marketing Communications for Tourism Ireland, suggests that it was luck that dropped perhaps the most successful destination marketing campaign of the year into his backyard, there’s more to be said about the persistence and creative thinking of Twomey and his agency partners.

Over the 15 years Twomey has spent marketing the island — both the U.K.-governed Northern Ireland and the independent Republic of Ireland — the southern end has historically enjoyed more notoriety, recognition and visitors. The north, however, recently identified and acted upon one such lucky break, emerging as its own tourism force in the process.

That’s because one of the most popular TV shows of this generation, Game of Thrones, happens to film in Northern Ireland, as well as Canada, Croatia, Iceland, Malta, Morocco, Spain and the United States. Of all those countries, however, only one took advantage of that opportunity, when recently Tourism Ireland put out a campaign that wowed Game of Thrones fans all over the world and received several accolades: Doors of Thrones.

The story behind the legendary Doors of Thrones begins, however, with taking advantage of a few of “lucky” circumstances years ago.

The Starting Point: Creating a Partnership with HBO

“About four years ago our advertising agency said there’s an opportunity here, let’s at least open the conversation and see what we can do,” said Twomey.

Their creative agency, Publicis, and their media agency, Carat, put together some initial content to pitch, ensuring that the production quality matched that of the show; but getting that content into the right hands proved challenging.

“It took about six months of discussion to identify the gatekeepers and get a buy-in into our vision,” he said.

“A big organization like that, you’ve got a team that looks after global marketing, you’ve got a team that looks after the legal aspects, you’ve got a team that looks after the show, you’ve got multiple stakeholders within HBO that have to be totally onboard with what’s being proposed.”

Eventually, from using, in his words, “Irish charm and persistence,” to build credibility and trust amongst stakeholders based around the world, in 2014 Tourism Ireland became the only destination in the world to create marketing content in collaboration with HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Each campaign that results from the partnership is still subject to a rigorous evaluation and approval process, says Twomey, but now there’s a direct link to the show’s most important stakeholders. “It goes right to the two main writers of the show,” he said. “They take a significant amount of executive time to approve our ambitious campaigns.”

Spinning an Accident into a Marketing Breakthrough

A couple of years into that partnership an equally significant opportunity once again crash-landed in Twomey’s backyard, though at first glance it may have appeared more like a tragedy.

In late 2015 and early 2016 Storm Gertrude ripped through the United Kingdom, leaving many without power and partially damaging one of Northern Ireland’s most popular Game of Thrones attractions. When the storm finally passed they discovered that the surreal tree tunnel featured in the show’s season two premiere was short a few branches.

Known as the Dark Hedges, the trail was planted in Northern Ireland more than 200 years prior, and had since become a key destination for Game of Thrones tourists.

“Although I think it was in the show for two or three seconds, it’s quite an evocative visual,” says Twomey. “A show like Game of Thrones, which uses a lot of CGI, there aren’t a huge amount of locations that are exactly as they were in the show, and the Dark Hedges is one of them.”

Knowing that the two fallen trees would have extraordinary value to fans, Twomey and his team considered how they could best convert the lumber into a lasting public attraction. “It was purely serendipity that the trees were knocked down in the storm,” he says. “We didn’t even know what we were creating at the start.”

Ultimately Twomey’s team, their agency partners and the gatekeepers at HBO decided to employ highly skilled artists and woodworkers to turn the lumber into a series of 10 doors.

The Result: Tourism Ireland’s Doors of Thrones

Why doors? one might ask.

“Why not doors?” says Twomey. “I think we sort of said ‘let’s create something you can mount’ and someone said, ‘Why not create a door?’”

The 10 doors, built from the fallen trees of the Dark Hedges, each represent one of the 10 episodes from season six, and can be found in 10 different locations scattered across the country.

“Because of our relationship with HBO we get inside information to the plotlines, which enabled us, as the show was aired, to reveal a door that had imbedded all of this real time information for that show for fans to decode.”

Each door was unveiled through social media videos that were viewed a combined 17.5 million times, engaged with 250,000 times, achieving a combined total reach of 126 million.

In 2016 the campaign generated £17 million in earned media (approximately $22 million USD), resulting in a record setting year for tourism that saw an 8% bump from 2015.

While each of the unique doors is tied to an individual episode that has long-since aired they continue to draw throngs of tourists to this day, who are encouraged to collect a stamp at all ten in their Game of Thrones tour of Northern Ireland passports. Twomey says that this strategy was intentional, drawing inspiration from New Zealand’s Hobbit Trail, which continues to draw tourists 14 years after the final Lord of the Rings film left theatres.

“It’s another layer, it’s something tangible, and even after the show leaves you can still visit the doors. They’re one-offs, the craftsmanship has a real wow factor, and the story is so original, which is why this campaign keeps winning awards.”

The international award count for the “Doors of Thrones” campaign recently surpassed 35 when it earned bronze, silver and gold Cannes Lions.

Though he’s sworn to secrecy Twomey can barely contain his excitement when trying to not talk about the campaign that will launch in mid-July in conjunction with the premiere of season seven. Whatever the result, he will likely credit luck or serendipity for its success, but those who have seen his “Irish charm and persistence” in action will know there’s more to it than that.

This article was originally published on the CrowdRiff blog on July 12, 2017.

Doors of Thrones: How Ireland Rose into the Travel Limelight with Game of Thrones was originally published in The Viewfinder on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It all began with the goal of getting the Faroe Islands on the map — literally.

The little known island nation, made up of 18 small volcanic landmasses halfway between Iceland, Norway and Scotland, totals less than 1,400 square kilometers, and is too small to be included on most world maps.

In 2012 the country’s tourism board set aside a budget equal to less than $340,000 USD for its small team of six, with the lofty goal of doubling its tourism industry by 2020 and securing its place on one very specific map.

“We know that Google Maps and Google Street View is synonymous with the world map today, that’s what everyone uses, and we were not on Google Street View, which is why we wanted to see if we could get them to come here,” said Guðrið Højgaard, the Director of Visit Faroe Islands.

The resulting campaign, Sheep View, was perhaps the biggest viral hit in the tourism industry of the past decade.

Launched in July of 2016 with a shoestring budget and the season’s tourism industry on the line, the Visit Faroe Islands team strapped cameras to a few of the country’s 80,000 sheep, and allowed users to interact with the resulting videos.

“We have more sheep than people; they are everywhere in they Faroe Islands, they walk the streets, so they were an easy solution,” said Højgaard, adding that the human population of the islands is less than 50,000. The campaign, which can be found at Sheepview360.com, features both a video blog about the project and actual footage gathered by sheep.

The effort, explains Højgaard, was largely a marketing ploy to get Google and the rest of the world’s attention, rather than an actual effort to map the island using sheep.

“At the end we got more than 2 billion impressions and about 50 million euros [approximately $56 million USD] in PR value. The goal was both to get more attention, that was the primary goal, and the second was to get Google Street View. And we got both.”

Suddenly, the Faroe Islands is on the World’s Radar

After discovering the campaign, Google’s official Twitter account, which boasts more than 18 million followers, began Tweeting about their intentions to visit the island. Soon after major international media outlets began following the story of the underdog nation fighting for its place on the map.

“We were suddenly so busy, we were on the media all the time, we were working 24 seven just to answer all the questions from all the international media, and we were very surprised that the reaction was so big.”

Højgaard adds, “Of course we thought we had a great idea, but working with PR you never know.”

Only two months after launching the campaign a plane carrying five Google representatives and Google Street View cameras touched down in the Faroe Islands for the first time.

“They have been making the footage for some time,” said Højgaard. “The country will be put on Google Street View quite soon.”

Staying True to its Roots

The effort has also pushed the country’s tourism industry beyond its accommodation capacity, at least in the summer season, but Højgaard doesn’t anticipate more hotels being built to accommodate the sudden influx.

“It’s a positive problem because you can always build yourself out of it, but at the same time we want to keep the islands authentic and unique and small. People come here because they want to be with nature, and tranquility, and to not be around too many people.”

As a result Visit Faroe Island hasn’t spent any of its 2017 marketing budget yet. Højgaard says that she and her team are already prepping their next project for launch this autumn, but doesn’t expect the same viral reach as Sheep View.

As Visit Faroe Islands works to keep the tranquility of the country intact the buzz about its enormously successful campaign continues to grow to this day. Visit Faroe Islands’ relatively low budget campaign is cleaning up this marketing industry awards season, leapfrogging the accolades of organizations with significantly more resources and brand recognition.

One Year Later: Lessons Learned from Sheep View

Sheep View surpassed hospitality giants Airbnb and Marriott as well as well funded tourism destinations like London and Partners and Destination Canada in the 2017 World Media Awards, where it received the top prize in the travel and tourism category and second place overall across all seven marketing categories.

The destination marketing organization’s project has also won four Epica awards, four Creative Circle Awards in Copenhagen, were the top winners at the Danish Digital awards, took home a Golden Bear in Berlin and the top PR award in Sweden. Danish media also speculates that the campaign is a safe bet for a Cannes Lions Award this summer.

Højgaard says that if she’s learned anything from the success of the campaign it’s that when it comes to marketing a destination, big budgets and brand recognition are no match for authenticity and sincerity.

“You should focus on something unique about your destination, and then it’s just planning, planning, planning,” she said. “Sheep is something we had in our destination, that told the whole story. It was a very simple story, kind of a David and Goliath story, but being sincere and at the same time taking a local perspective, that’s what made this story unique.”

Højgaard explains the country isn’t home to major tourist attractions, world-renowned restaurants or a vibrant nightlife; it’s home to some passionate people, and a heck of a lot of sheep. With this project, however, the country has proven that that’s all one needs to secure their place on the map.

This article was originally published on the CrowdRiff blog on June 26, 2017.

Sheep View: How the Faroe Islands Created The Most Viral Tourism Marketing Campaign On A Shoestring… was originally published in The Viewfinder on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If social media activity could serve as a measure for civic pride, then you’d be hard pressed to find a Canadian province whose residents are more proud than Manitobans.

Ranked 6th by population amongst the country’s 13 provinces and territories, and boasting little more than 3.5% of the country’s overall headcount, according to the 2016 census, its citizenry have produced some of the most spectacular images and social media content of Canadian life one can find on the internet.

Support from Fellow Manitobans is Key

“We have a very tapped-in local community; they’re very eager to share with us,” said Nisha Tuli, the Senior Content Marketing Manager for Travel Manitoba. “I think a lot of it comes from the younger demographic who are growing up here realizing this is a really awesome place and want to show it off.”

That highly engaged community of citizens and amateur photographers has become a vital resource for Travel Manitoba, which boasts nearly 60,000 followers on its Instagram channel. Though historically not a top destination for first-time visitors, the Travel Manitoba marketing team hopes its social media efforts will show visitors in neighboring provinces and beyond what they’re missing, while helping to build engagement and pride among its locals.

Their Instagram is largely used to showcase the best shots of anything tagged with the #ExploreMB hashtag, ranging from beluga whales and the Northern Lights to ballparks and local foodie hotspots.

Travel Manitoba isn’t the only one pushing these breathtaking images to the world through social media. Some of its most prominent contributors have huge followings of their own, and the sharing of resources helps bolster the profiles of both parties.

“When we share someone’s photos and they thank us and tag us it just helps perpetuate our content through their friends and followers,” explains Tuli.

The destination marketing organization appreciated one of its regular social media contributors so much that they recently hired him as an in-house digital content specialist. The new hire, Austin MacKay, regularly shares breathtakingly beautiful (and often seemingly impossible to capture) images of his native province with the 18,000 followers of his Instagram account.

“We’ve been following his work and we know he knows and loves this province, and sure enough he’ll be starting with us in a couple of weeks,” said Tuli.

Instagram is Relevant Beyond Social Media

T o further engage with their online community the destination marketing organization has run various social media contests and campaigns using user-generated content, decorating blog posts, visitor guides and calendars with images acquired from social media.

Breanne Sewards, Travel Manitoba’s Editorial Content Specialist writes content for their blog, ManitobaHot, taking good advantage of Instagram photos.

“Making those galleries for the blog with CrowdRiff has been a huge time saver, because before we had to sort through all the Facebook pages of various businesses to find usable shots. Now if I want to write about ’10 Restaurants to Eat At This Summer’ I just look up each restaurant on CrowdRiff and I can easily compile a gallery of nice food shots with user-generated content.”

Travel Manitoba is also working on publishing a new magazine using some of those eye-catching social media shots, and continues to find unique ways to bring its online presence to life in the non-digital world.

“A couple of years ago there was a coffee table Instagram book made with something like 200 photos,” said Tuli, adding that the book was given away to media and other visitors as a free promotional item. “To this day people are still asking for them, and we’ve run out.”

Travel Manitoba is now in the process of curating more images in order to put together another book in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Canada’s confederation.

“Throughout the year we’ve been collecting photos, and the idea is to put that into a book at the end of the year,” said Tuli. “People loved the first book so much we may have to consider selling the next one,” she joked.

The Trick to Curating an Wanderlust-Worthy Feed

While the local community produces some amazing content it is ultimately up to Travel Manitoba’s staff to curate these images onto its channels and build them out with supporting content.

“I have to weigh beauty versus originality, so if it’s something I’ve never seen on Instagram before then I’ll definitely try and post it, even if it’s not the best photo — whereas if it’s something iconic it has to be really good to be posted,” said Sewards, adding that the account has been tagged in over 200,000 photos.

“We also like to try and have a variety of urban and rural, outdoor versus indoor,” adds Tuli. “We’re very aware of that aspect when we do any kind of content.”

The Travel Manitoba curating effort has been so successful that it received CrowdRiff’s 2017 VIZZI Award for Visual Influence in the “Best Social Media Visuals” category.

“We feel pretty good about our Instagram account right now,” said Tuli. “It’s definitely our fastest growing social channel and the one that gets the most engagement. It’s also very positive and loving community, which isn’t always the case on social media.”

For a destination that has always struggled for recognition amongst better known Canadian destinations, Sewards and Tuli hope the growing social media buzz can help show potential visitors the unparalleled splendor of Manitoba, while continuing to grow civic pride and engagement amongst its locals.

This article was originally published on the CrowdRiff blog on June 20, 2017.

How Travel Manitoba Reveals Its Hidden Beauty through Instagram was originally published in The Viewfinder on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How do you market a place that has the potential to be all things to all people? How do you communicate a brand message without sounding like a brand trying to communicate a message?

How do you get people to explore a place they think they already know?

These were all questions Ali Daniels, the Vice President of Marketing for Visit Seattle, was considering in 2011 when her organization received funding to promote the city as a leisure destination for the very first time.

There is much that makes the city of Seattle unique, but as Daniels explains it’s a city that many people think they already know.

“When people think about Seattle they think about the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, ferry boats and Starbucks.”

But the story doesn’t end there. “Those are the things we love to embrace, but we want to show them that there’s so much more,” said Daniels.

Visit Seattle knows that it’s also the music city that gave birth to Nirvana, Jimi Hendrix and Macklemore and Ryan Lewis; they know it’s a city with a robust and diverse food industry, and one situated in America’s second largest wine-producing state, boasting over 900 wineries.

Visit Seattle also knew that they couldn’t be the ones to tell the stories of such a unique place directly, as it would lack authenticity, so they devised a solution.

User-Generated Content Campaign: #TwoDaysInSeattle

“Our first campaign that we launched in the beginning of 2012 was called Two Days in Seattle, and we brought social media influencers into the city, gave them a little bit of money, told them to explore and use the hashtag ‘#TwoDaysInSeattle,” said Daniels.

“We know people trust people like them more than they trust people like us that get paid to talk about a destination, so we knew that there was something there with this user-generated content piece.”

It was around this time that video was starting to emerge as the social media’s most popular storytelling medium, which inspired Daniels and her team to adopt the medium for the campaign moving forward.

“We didn’t really have any video content [previously],” she said. “We had a three-minute video, but it was very travel-specific.”

“What we wanted to do is create content that people would look for, not just when they’re thinking about travel.”

And that led to Visit Seattle’s ground-breaking online video channel: VISITSEATTLE.tv

Today, the videos Visit Seattle and its partners have uploaded have been consumed for over 40 million minutes total, spread across seven distinct series. There are two more scheduled for 2017.

These series include:

• Been there Made That, which follows visiting artists as they incorporate the city into their works, produced in partnership with Vox Media
• Culture Trippers, which pairs locals with visitors who share similar passions, made in partnership with the Matador Network
• Project Five by Five, which invites five notable filmmakers to Seattle to find inspiration for a short film about the city, in partnership with Sundance TV
• +Play, wherein a group of local children guide viewers through the city’s museums, in partnership with NBC
• Sounds by the Sound, which showcases local artists as they perform in the city’s most scenic locations, produced in partnership with Revolt TV.

Visit Seattle also has two series that they produce independently: Seattle First Takes, which shares the stories of first time visitors, and Hey Seattle, which acts as the Visit Seattle’s FAQ section, hosted by Seattle musician and podcaster John Roderick, who answers tourists questions from the desk of a mobile talk show set sitting on a flatbed truck.

While each of these videos differs significantly in their content, there are a few running themes — most notably the brand’s role in the content.

“Seattle is a supporting actor, not the star.”

Producers also try to take cues from the city’s laid-back nature, an intangible but noticeable quality of both the destination and the videos.

“We want it to be authentically Seattle, so it needs to be a little laid back,” said Daniels, describing the city as the kind of place where people wear jeans and Birkenstock sandals to steakhouses and upscale restaurants. “We’re not Vegas, and we would never try to be Vegas, so we’re not in your face. It just has this sort of mellow energy to it, and we find partners that help bring that to life.”

Partnerships are key to making the whole project a success.

“Find a media partner that has the audience that you’re after, and an attitude that matches yours,” she advises.

The other key to the project, according to Daniels, is a certain confidence in the brand, and a willingness to relinquish control of the messaging in order to achieve greater authenticity.

“That was one of the scariest things, when you put your brand into someone else’s hands and ask them to create something around that,” she said, in reference to those first influencers who were brought in for Visit Seattle’s first campaign. “But that’s what’s been so fun; they tell the story so differently than what we could have ever imagined,” she adds.

VISITSEATTLE.tv: The Results

Since the end of 2015 Visit Seattle has produced 128 individual pieces of content, which have achieved a 67% view-through rate; an impressive fete considering videos can last as long as 22 minutes.

Since the start of the campaign tourism has increased and extended later into the season, and hotel occupancy rates held steady at an annual average of 82% in 2016, buts it’s impossible to determine which factors have the greatest influence on the city’s strong tourism industry.

No matter what the impact of the videos has been, however, Daniels and her staff take pride in their ability to showcase the city in a way that is both uniquely authentic and representative of the best it has to offer.

“It’s nice when you love your brand, and when your brand is your home,” said Daniels. “When you have a special connection with it — and I think everyone that works on this project, whether it’s our agency or our partners or my team, feels that there’s something extra special about it — they give it a little bit more than they normally would.”

This article was originally published on the CrowdRiff blog, on April 17, 2017.

How Visit Seattle’s Videos Came to Achieve Over 40 Million Minutes of Viewing Time was originally published in The Viewfinder on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When people’s perceptions of a place don’t match its reality, it helps to do more showing than telling.

That’s the strategy of Visit Pittsburgh, the destination marketing organization tasked with replacing the old Steel Town image with the reality of an exciting urban city on the rise.

“Pittsburgh has always had a negative reputation as a smoky steel city, so why would anyone want to go there?” asks Molly Allwein, the Digital Marketing Manager at Visit Pittsburgh. “We’re always working on overcoming that perception, and once we get people here they’re always astounded.”

Though many associate the city with smoke stacks and steel workers, Pittsburgh has been collecting countless awards and accolades over the past couple of years that tell a wildly different story. In the first few months of 2017 alone it’s been named one of the best cities for architecture, one of the most kid friendly cities, one of the best foodie cities, a top 10 budget destination, the most underrated city in America, a top 10 city for STEM professionals and many, many more.

“If we can’t get someone physically to the location to show them how beautiful it is, than we want to show them virtually as much as we can.”

The Visit Pittsburgh website aims to put that more accurate picture of the city on full display. So their site is packed with eye-catching images, ranging from skylines captured by professional photographers to meals and events captured by everyday locals and visitors.

“What we really like about CrowdRiff and user-generated content is that it’s other people talking about Pittsburgh. It’s not coming from us as a sales and marketing organization, we’re giving the platform to people who have been here and want to rave about the city.”

Leveraging user-generated content on the blog

The mantra of sharing the website with locals and visitors goes well beyond photography. One of the websites’ premier features is its blog, and each post is packed with photos and visuals. Many are even written by guest bloggers.

“We don’t change a lot of the information on our main website and our landing pages that frequently, so blogs allow us to be more nimble and agile and talk about the new exciting and upcoming things happening in the city,” says Allwein.

“The blog allows us to have a personality, and use guest writers in the community who just want to talk about the city.”

Though Visit Pittsburgh’s staff still contributes about half of the posts it leans heavily on guest bloggers and user-generated photos to give it more personality. The organization identifies local influencers in specific categories like food and family entertainment, and invites them to share their passion and expertise on the website.

“We write content for our website, for our visitors guides, for our events publications, and if the same people write the same content it’s all written the same way,” says Allwein. “This approach really allows us to shake things up and figure out what other people want to talk about.”

The goal, explains Allwein, is to bring the influencer’s audience to the Visit Pittsburgh website, while exposing its own visitors to local influencers. “We give them that platform to expand their audience and bring their audience over to our blog, so it works really well both ways,” she says.

While the expertise of her staff and guest bloggers is a vital component of the blog, Allwein says that visuals are equally as important. As soon as a blogger submits a story idea Allwein gets to work sourcing photos using CrowdRiff. She’s incorporated galleries of user-generated content into as many posts as possible since first discovering CrowdRiff three years ago.

“Everything is pointing to lower and lower attention spans for people reading digital content, and they spend more time on pages that have compelling visual images. CrowdRiff gives us unlimited access to photos that are new and relevant.”

Next steps for Visit Pittsburgh’s website

Allwein and her team are now hard at work at rebuilding the site, incorporating even more visuals and user-generated content to display the most up-to-date picture of what the city has to offer.

“We’re thinking of having some HTML5 video running in our large header images, we’re going to use the CrowdRiff Calls-to-Action in different locations on our new website, which we’re not really using right now, and along with that we’ll have related content modules, which will be image focused,” says Allwein.

Though the destination marketing organization is already using CrowdRiff quite heavily Allwein adds that she looks forward to exploring even more capabilities when the new website launches this autumn.

“We’re excited about the innovations that CrowdRiff is working on, because they’re always trying new things and staying ahead of the curve.”

This article was originally published on the CrowdRiff blog on May 31, 2017.

How Visit Pittsburgh Transforms Old Perceptions of the City with User-Generated Content was originally published in The Viewfinder on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

South Africa is a land of diverse cultures, of world-class wines and breathtaking views, of mega metropolises and sun soaked coasts; all of which catch the average visitor completely by surprise. That is because when most people consider visiting the country they tend to focus on safari adventures, and little else.

In an effort to expose prospective tourists to the other wonders the country has to offer, South African Tourism had amassed an extensive library of content over the years, featuring clips and scenes that reach from the coastline to the cities to the safari lodges.

But without much awareness of the vast and diverse attractions that lay beyond the inland wilderness, South African Tourism had to come up with a clever way to educate travelers on the other wonders that await discovery.

“When they leave South Africa visitors are complete astounded by the breadth and depth of the experiences and the people that they meet.”

Dale Jooste, the Content Editor for South African Tourism explains, “We wanted to make people realize that you can pretty much do whatever your heart desires, whether you’re an active adventure traveler or you just like natural scenic beauty or you’re a foodie or you like big city energy. We wanted to find a way of showcasing that.”

Introducing South African Tourism’s 24 Hours of Wow Campaign

“We looked at the massive increase of online video consumption and realized that would be a good place to start,” said Jooste.

The resulting microsite, 24 Hours of Wow, welcomes visitors with a clock face, and then presents some of the best attractions the country has to offer at each hour of the day. Every six seconds the clock moves ahead by an hour, displaying another activity, scene or attraction that’s available at that hour.

“The overall idea was that you could experience your own 24 hours in South Africa, with individual 6-second clips that you can choose depending on what your preferences were.”

The 24 Hours of Wow campaign then encourages visitors to build their own 24-hour adventure by mixing together video clips that are organized into six unique categories.

Visitors can, for example, explore a morning at a café in the city, an afternoon of extreme sports in an outdoor playground, a sunset over the coastline and an evening soaking in the country’s vibrant culture. While they are encouraged to build their own 24-hour clock visitors can also let the “shuffle” option surprise them.

There are 144 individual video clips in all, each as diverse as the country itself. They include drone footage of coastlines, time lapses of sunsets, street performers, football games, rooftop patios, gourmet kitchens, vineyard tours, fishing adventures and much more.

Building and Launching the Microsite

Jooste estimates that about 60% of the content was already available in South African Tourism’s archive, with the remainder collected in the months leading up to the campaign launch in late October of 2016.

“Instead of putting just videos up on our website, which presupposes that people know about the experiences that are available, choosing to do it the way that we did encourages people to explore more.”

Jooste expanded, “Giving it to people in a way that is easily digestible but also encourages them to investigate a little bit more was really the strategic intention.”

Once launched the microsite, 24hoursofwow.southafrica.net, was promoted internally through programmatic ad buys, blog content and social media campaigns that targeted users based on their interests. Regional offices also developed physical campaigns and activations that targeted local consumers all over the world.

Jooste credits South African Tourism’s lead agency, FCB, for pursuing what she describes as an “incredibly technical build.”

Since its launch the microsite has been visited over 600,000 times, with the average visitor spending approximately three minutes, though in months immediately following launch site visits averaged almost 10.

“It is a very unique navigation tool, and it’s one that, to my knowledge, has never been tried before,” said Jooste. “It effectively integrated those 24-hour streams across 144 clips to deliver something that is as bespoke a piece of communication as you can get.”

Though the bulk of the 24 Hours of Wow campaign currently lives on its own microsite, South African Tourism seeks to put the campaign at the front and center of a new main page that is currently under development.

“At the moment it’s more of a campaign site that then leads to tourism information,” explains Jooste. “The end goal is that it becomes integrated so that it’s all in one place, so you don’t need to navigate to the microsite to see the campaign or from the campaign to the tourism information.”

The campaign’s initial goal, to educate travelers about the breadth and variety of activities there are to do in South Africa, seems well accomplished. Now, visitors can immerse themselves in all the possibilities in the country, and put South Africa on the map beyond its great safari adventures.

This article was originally published on the CrowdRiff blog on May 18th, 2017.

How South African Tourism Mesmerizes Travelers with their 24 Hours of Wow Campaign was originally published in The Viewfinder on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.