National State Tourism Directors Mercury Awards > Industry and Strategic Partnerships

WanderLove

About This Entry:

In the early days of the pandemic, Virginia Tourism faced the same issues as many other destination marketers. The future of travel was uncertain and our partners around the state were suffering. How could we support our tourism partners while also responsibly promoting travel?

Working hand in hand with our research partners at SIR, we focused on two insights: first, we knew that while consumers missed travel, they were currently still fearful. Second, when consumers did return to travel, many would likely begin by taking shorter road trips and avoiding crowds.

With these insights in mind, VTC began working on a recovery initiative that would unite our industry, generate immediate economic impact for our communities and encourage travelers to safely start flexing their travel muscles again.

Defined as a strong desire to travel, Wanderlust was the perfect word to describe the feeling we all had last year while travel was halted. By slightly adjusting the word to align with our brand, Virginia is for Lovers, we created WanderLove, which became our unified message, “Your WanderLove is calling-- and adventure is the destination”

The campaign was developed to position Virginia as the ultimate road trip destination to families and young couples who live in-state. Knowing there was concern with the safety of travel, we focused on five thematic pillars that we felt highlighted low-risk travel experiences in Virginia: Scenic Drives, Outdoor Experiences, Small Towns, Hidden Gems and LOVEworks, which are a collection of 275 colorful, Instagrammable, roadside “LOVE” signs. These five pillars not only captured the unique aspects of a Virginia road-trip but also promoted low-risk experiences that travelers could enjoy from their car or socially distanced from large crowds.

To further amplify the WanderLove campaign, we provided a DMO Recovery Grant of $10,000 awarded to 90 DMO’s to create their own WanderLove content. Along with funding, partners had access to a toolkit with creative templates including digital banners, social posts, logos, news releases and blog outlines making this a very turnkey opportunity.

Campaign Strategy:

With this campaign, we wanted to make it easy for travelers to plan their road trip to Virginia. We also wanted to create a campaign that was flexible enough for partners to leverage in their own marketing, at a time when funds and creative resources were scarce.

From the creative standpoint, we wanted travelers to feel joy and excitement by picturing themselves on a road trip. So we partnered with local creatives to capture first-person, immersive videos as they traveled from their homes to locations around the state. Infused with UGC clips and off-the-cuff moments, the resulting video series provided a fun and spontaneous glimpse of families, friends and couples traveling safely on Virginia road trips.

The videos provided travel inspiration then directed viewers to companion blogs and the website to plan their own trip.

Along with the video and blog series, we created a WanderLove landing page and email newsletter featuring the blogs, videos and safety information. We promoted all content through VTC’s social media channels with organic and paid placements.

To further amplify the campaign, we partnered with Blue Ridge Outdoors and Matador Network + Airstream to reach outdoor enthusiasts through sponsored content, social posts and dedicated emails featuring Virginia Road Trips. A custom WanderLove co-op was developed for industry partners through Blue Ridge Outdoors.

VTC also pitched in-state and regional media outlets and partnered with travel influencers to provide a third-party perspective of all of the safe ways to travel throughout Virginia.

Finally, we multiplied our impact exponentially by providing campaign strategy and creative to industry partners, many of whom faced uncertainty and limited funding. It was critical that we not only feature them in our campaign but enable them to join our efforts.

VTC created a WanderLove Recovery Grant and Toolkit with campaign guidelines, logos, video graphics, fonts, and messaging, and templates for digital banners, social posts, blogs and news releases. Providing funding, strategy and creative took a weight off of our partners, enabling them to quickly customize creative and get back into the marketplace, while also unifying them like never before in a broad-reaching campaign.

Results:

Our goals for this campaign were to unite our industry, increase awareness among in-state audiences and to generate immediate impact through visitation.

From a partner perspective, we had a total of 90 partners participate in the WanderLove campaign. Through the grant, VTC funded $866,000 and partners matched that amount with a total $3,142,688 in additional funding for the campaign. This resulted in a $3 to $1 leverage of VTC dollars that further amplified the campaign.Each partner utilized the WanderLove toolkit, creating their own campaign deliverables which were promoted utilizing the recovery grant funds.
During a critical time, our industry came together to keep Virginia top of mind for travelers. WanderLove provided funding and cohesive messaging when they needed it the most. Partners reported an increase in visitation due to the campaign, citing that they would not have been able to advertise had it not been for WanderLove.

“As a small rural DMO, I cannot stress the appreciation nor the value of the VTC grants to my destination. WanderLove turned out to be a great campaign for us, drawing visitors from all over the country.” - Scott County Tourism

“For 15 consecutive weeks, the campaign helped our market achieve #1 hotel occupancy out of all the top 25 markets in the US, according to STR.” Norfolk & Virginia Beach

From an awareness perspective, WanderLove crushed the goals. Our budget for the campaign was $160k which was allocated across marketing channels to garner the following results:
Over 27 million impressions
360k website visits, (6x the original goal of 60k)
2.9 million video views, (almost 2x the original goal of 1.5 million)
310k Email opens, with a 14% open rate, our best to date
51k Influencer engagements, (10x the original goal of 5k)


According to our ROI study with Omnitrak, around 72% of exposed Virginia residents said the WanderLove campaign positively impacted their perceptions of Virginia as a travel destination. Furthermore, one third (32%) of the Virginia resident audience recalled seeing an ad and 35% reported planning to visit within the next 6 months.

Why This Is A Finalist: 

Excellent job promoting responsible travel to the key areas and attractions around the state. Awesome work in supporting and connecting with Virginia tourism partners.

The objectives were clearly outlined - to unite the industry, increase awareness among in-state audiences, and generate immediate economic impact by encouraging safe travel. By awarding grants of $10,000 to 90 DMO’s to create their own WanderLove content, that's a good way to leverage partnership to promote travel.

The innovative and out-of-the-box creative thinking for this campaign was excellent - and showed in the overall results. Providing toolkits and encouraging participation to the ultimately ~90 partners was a strong way to push a campaign from just smart marketing to having an economic impact across the state.