National State Tourism Directors Mercury Awards > Branding and Integrated Marketing Campaign: State Marketing Budget More Than $10 Million

Firsts That Last

About This Entry:

Sometimes it takes a fresh look at an old fact to generate a game-changing insight, and in 2018, Visit North Carolina did just that. The fact: more than 83% of North Carolina’s out-of-state overnight visitors are repeat visitors (with nearly 60% having visited more than three times in five years). The insight: once someone visits once, they’re likely to return again and again. So Visit NC set out drive incremental travel to the state by creating affinity among first-time visitors, making emotional connections with them so they’d be NC travelers for life.

The first step was defining the first-time visitor audience, which we did with a combination of first- and third-party research, from an A&U study to evaluations of travel trends. We dug beyond demographics and focused on the emotional motivators of those we wanted to travel to NC, especially those with some affinity for North Carolina but who hadn’t been here before. We found that they tended to be more experience-driven in their vacation preferences, and while they knew North Carolina for rest and relaxation, they were motivated on a higher level by travel that makes them feel more in touch with themselves.

That led to a campaign strategy focused on richer experiences – where you feel each moment and emotion to the fullest to truly be more in touch with yourself. Combining that depth of feeling with the literal first-time visit created Visit NC’s biggest campaign platform to date: Firsts That Last.

Firsts That Last is built on the idea that there is something magical about firsts, and that the enchantment and impact of those richer experiences never gets old in North Carolina. Here, travelers don’t just get away from it all – they make emotional connections with themselves as they experience Firsts That Last.

Campaign Strategy:

Such rich emotional connections couldn’t be created with actors, and that’s where Visit NC’s campaign stands out: finding captivating, relatable, real first-time visitors to North Carolina, and bringing them here for some of life’s most awesome firsts.

Utilizing creative methods of real people casting, we found:

• Chris and Andrea—newlywed parents of a blended family in Georgia who embrace the outdoors but hadn’t seen, much less scaled, a real waterfall.
• Zac and Tomo—musicians who called New York home and ventured to cities around the globe, but hadn’t visited a southern small town, much less tasted real moonshine.
• Jazmene and Peyton—a precious young mother and daughter from Ohio, neither of whom had ever laid eyes on the ocean.

After interviews and vetting, we brought these travelers to North Carolina for their milestone (and more minor) firsts, documenting their journeys as they experienced them in real time. Those real-life stories fueled compelling content across a multitude of touchpoints with potential travelers.

Each trip became a two-minute video, diving into the emotion of the experiences with footage and audio from interviews that our director Jake Oleson (Acres New York) did personally with each group. Compilations of the feelings our travelers experienced made up emotional :60 and :30 TV spots that ran in six primary target markets. Photographer Chris Wilson documented striking stills of each travel group with new dimensions of those firsts, capturing not just the place, but its impact on the visitors. The new VisitNC.com – launched along with the campaign – showcased video content and actual itinerary information. Public relations efforts integrated the original travelers in media missions and invited writers to experience their own Firsts That Last. And partners like Meredith Travel Marketing infused Firsts That Last into the Official Travel Guide. All inspiring that medium-affinity, never-visited target (and loyal visitors alike) to convert and discover why North Carolina is a state of Firsts That Last.

Across tactics, we aimed for awareness (did travelers see and consume the campaign); engagement (did they build that emotional connection); and conversion (did they come to NC as a result).

Results:

In its first year, Firsts That Last exceeded all expectations.

• Sessions to VisitNC.com from TV markets grew 85 percent during the initial spring push – 17 times the nationwide growth rate.
• People spent more than 1.9 million minutes watching the Firsts That Last film content, averaging nearly 80 percent duration viewed.
• The campaign generated a 1.9 tiimes arrival lift (via Arrivalist) as soon as 30 days after launch – meaning those who saw it were almost twice as likely to come to NC as those who didn’t.

With the initial strategy, development and production budget of approximately $1 million, Firsts That Last is now completely entwined in Visit NC’s marketing program. And in its launch year, visitor spending grew by 5.6 percent over 2017—totaling $25.3 billion and representing the largest percentage growth in tourism spending since 2011.

Why This Is A Finalist: 

The judges loved this campaign and declared it to be real, authentic, insightful and emotional. This campaign created first time experiences using real people, inspiring first time visitors to plan their trip. The campaign was beautifully conceptualized and shot creative that highlights a rich diversity of people and experiences, and unified by a cohesive thematic thread. The “Firsts that Last” theme branded the campaign perfectly and compelled even the judges to want to go explore the destination.