National State Tourism Directors Mercury Awards > Social Media Campaign

Maine Office of Tourism

The Maine Thing

About This Entry:

The Maine Office of Tourism (MOT) aims to drive demand for travel to the state of Maine through a robust marketing program centered on the core human value of originality. This brand platform is expressed in The Maine Thing. As Maine's brand grows and visitation increases year-over-year. MOT's brand is evolving into the lifestyle space by looking for meaningful and credible opportunities to permeate Maine into consumers’ daily lives. One such effort was accomplished through a social media influencer campaign.

MOT challenged itself to create a program unlike other “me too” influencer programs. They wanted a campaign that extended beyond the limited shelf life of typical influencer programs, involved Maine's eight regions and engaged consumers long after the campaign with a compelling visual narrative.

The Maine Thing Influencer campaign brought a group of prominent Instagram photographers to experience its authentic culture, people and landscapes, while producing content to promote the destination along the way. The influencers were selected based on their alignment with Maine’s platform of originality, outdoor-centric content and sizeable network of followers.

Their week-long experiences were showcased in an evergreen feature on Maine’s editorial online publication, The Maine Thing Quarterly. Furthermore, MOT offered a compelling co-op advertising component that allowed regional participation, photography generation and paid advertising.

Objectives:
• Elevate Maine as a genuine and authentic lifestyle brand, promoting unique aspects of the
state and its regions
• Extend reach to highly-relevant Influencer audiences; adults who are looking for an
adventurous, off-the-beaten-path experience
• Promote brand engagement on social channels, inspiring meaningful discussions and
ultimately future travel
• Curate brand photography of Maine’s regions to develop future content and co-op
marketing

An audience profile was created using Mediamark Research Inc. (MRI) data to target people with the highest potential for traveling to Maine. This profile combines demographic data with consumer attitudes and values that align with the Maine brand platform.

• Adults 25-54
• HHI of $100,000+
• Have or expressed interest in visiting Maine
• Value curiosity: want to explore and learn new things
• Value being in tune with nature
• Value creativity: being creative, imaginative

Campaign Strategy:

MOT deployed five Influencers – with over 2,300,000 followers – to the state's eight regions to capture photography of its unique offerings through their personal lenses – their “Maine Thing”. Robust itineraries were developed to expose each Influencer to the unique and signature experiences of the regions – from biking the Carrabasset Valley Trail. to noshing donuts at Holy Donut in Portland. to a float plane fly-in to remote Moosehead Lake.

They captured photos of their experiences and published sponsored daily posts on Instagram/Facebook to promote the state using the campaign hashtag #MaineThing, while @ tagging each region and MOT for additional exposure. MOT and its regional partners engaged with the Influencers and their followers on social channels to start conversations about travel to Maine.

At the end of their individual adventures, an Influencer meet-up was organized in Portland. With a production crew, MOT documented their day of exploring, dining and sharing.

The Influencers’ experiences were later presented as a photo essay feature on The Maine Thing Quarterly website, titled Paths and Pictures Taken. A second wave of sponsored posts ran on the Influencers’ social channels to promote the feature and drive traffic to the website. MOT deployed promotional emails to launch the feature, produced a toolkit for its industry to share the program and activated media relations. The website feature was also integrated on MOT’s planning website, VisitMaine.com, and in paid media through display, native, social and paid search.

MOT received 750 image selects for digital use in perpetuity from the Influencers. This robust library of editorial-style photography – a departure from traditional destination photography – further established MOT’s credibility as a lifestyle brand.

Photography captured during the program were used to produce new landing pages on VisitMaine.com to highlight the state’s eight regions.

Links to the Influencers’ social profiles were included throughout the websites to establish connectivity with these brand ambassadors.

A paid co-op campaign was executed on behalf of Maine’s regions across digital and social channels utilizing assets from the Influencer program, which ran concurrently with MOT’s summer 2016 campaign.

Influencers:
@benschuyler
@emilyblincoe
@forrestmankins
@jayzombie
@thiswildidea

Results:

The Maine Thing Influencer program was successful in reaching new audiences, driving traffic to the website and generating engagement and dialogue amongst consumers. The Influencers continue to live within MOT’s network of brand ambassadors who advocate for the state.

In total, the Influencer program deliverables resulted in:
• 2,686,675 audience members reached
• 86 influencer social posts
• 750 image selects for use on MOT online channels in perpetuity
• Total program social posts resulted in:
o 31,195,825 impressions
o 881,801 engagements
 876,160 likes
 4,382 comments
 1,259 shares

Not only did the program exceed deliverables and social media goals, it resulted in outstanding engagement from fans eagerly joining the conversation sharing their own testimonials, travel tips, memories and dreams of travel to Maine:
• “Gorgeous! Maine is at the very top of our American to-visit list.”
• “Already dreaming of next year’s trip to Maine.”
• “Maine is so unfussy and so magical at the same time - one of my favorite places on the
planet!”
• “I spent every summer of my childhood in York Beach and Nubble Light was a favorite spot
for family photos. Thanks for taking me back there.”
• “I hope I could do this some day.”
• “Maine is such a special place that many people haven't discovered yet.”

This consumer engagement allowed MOT and its industry partners to start conversions with new audiences, offering planning information and insider tips to encourage travel to the state.

The additional paid promotion of the Influencers contributed to increased traffic to and engagement with The Maine Thing Quarterly: Paths and Pictures Taken website feature.
• 206% increase in web traffic compared to previous features without Influencer promotion
o Total sessions to date 43,000
• Total website page views to date 126,800

Program execution budget = $230,000

Why This Is A Finalist: 

From beginning to end, this campaign authentically aligned with the destination brand, as well as its aspirations. Although "influencers" are not a new concept, the way they were engaged here felt very appropriate and right-sized. We liked that Maine moved aside and let others tell their story. This was an authentic and engaging way to introduce people to Maine. Both qualitative and quantitative metrics were achieved - quite an accomplishment.