National State Tourism Directors Mercury Awards > Video, Film or Podcast Series

For the Love of Tennesse, Travel Safe | Holcomb Family Roadtrip

About This Entry:

Tennessee’s tourism industry saw record-high travel spending in 2019, which led to an increase in economic activity, jobs, and crucial tax revenue supporting essential public services. After the pandemic hit, no one was traveling. The tourism industry was hit the hardest resulting in sharp economic and employment losses. The popular Tennessee music industry was hit hard as well and there were many musicians stuck at home. To rebuild tourism in Tennessee, we had to find a way to convince Americans you could still travel safely.

That bring us to late 2020, after months of being stuck at home, American’s wanted to travel but they were afraid to do so. Research showed that people felt most comfortable taking road trips and travel by RV was also gaining popularity. We based our audience on the research that Americans were going to start traveling closer to home and targeted those within 500 miles to Tennessee. We needed to show our audience that Tennessee is full of outdoor activities for all ages and inspire them to visit safely.

So, we tapped into Tennessee’s most important available resource: Musicians stuck at home. Tennessee based singer-songwriters Drew and Ellie Holcomb would normally be on tour with their bands. But after shows and tours were cancelled, we sent them back on the road...but this time, with their family to explore Tennessee’s unmatched scenic beauty, cities and charming small towns. We asked them to write a love song to the American people, reminding them they could still travel to and across Tennessee safely. We filmed their safe adventures and the moments inspiration struck, along with every back-and-forth detail of their songwriting process and turned it into a 6 episode web series documenting the journey.

The song they crafted, Feels like Home, feels like an anthem for Tennessee — a song about all the little moments that add up to what’s important: Love. Joy. Home. At the end of their trip, we brought them to the famous (and empty) Ryman Auditorium to perform their song together, voices rising to the rafters.

Campaign Strategy:

The For The Love of Tennessee, Travel Safe campaign launched in October 2020 featuring Episode 1 as well as other :30 sec teaser spots, animated banners, social posts, email, OOH and print. We released a new episode weekly of the Holcomb's road trip across TN with the final 'Encore' episode being centered around a song the Holcomb's wrote inspired by their trip. We used teasers of our 6 episode web series documenting the journey on Hulu, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to reach our family and music lover audience within 500 miles of Tennessee.

On Hulu, we targeted Families and Music Lovers with an immersive sequential ad experience. Each :30 video teaser was served during a single episode of CTV programming. On YouTube, we aligned with Travel and Family content to reach users interested in road tripping with their families using pre-roll ads where we found users watching our videos in full. On Facebook and Instagram, we targeted both families and music lovers with carousels, static posts, video posts, and Drew and Ellie Holcomb also posted in-feed to share their experience with fans. The episodes were also promoted to users interested in key music interests displaying travel intent.

We wrapped the campaign by heading the to the recording studio with Drew and Ellie Holcomb to create an EP and released 'Feels Like Home' and 'Rivers', both songs they wrote on their trip, on Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music and as an album and promoted the release of these songs on Facebook and Instagram.

Results:

This was a $4.5 million campaign funded by the CARES Act. For this campaign that was centered around the web video series, we found that the storytelling content resonated with viewers and users watched more than 23 years’ worth of content in 30 days (that's 203,382 hours!). When pulling results, we found that viewers watched an average of 4 to 5 minutes of our branded content before the video they had selected to watch. We had over 567,000 clicks to our site and 61.9 million completed video views. The press also loved the story and it garnered more than 756 Million earned impressions. SMARI advertising effectiveness study showed that travel intent to Tennessee doubled for out of state travels who viewed the content.

Why This Is A Finalist: 

This is the best example of branded entertainment that will provoke action. Well thought campaign from all the perspectives and having an emotional song with great visuals as the end result is powerful.

Talk about a 360° marketing campaign! The web series, its teasers and presence on Hulu, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube proved successful with reaching families and music lovers within 500 miles of Tennessee.

From start to finish this is a well thought campaign. I have been to Tennessee several times, but only to Nasvhville and I cant wait to go back and discover more. The quality of production, assets and the media placements made it a great success.