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

Idaho Department of Commerce – Tourism Development

18 Summers

About This Entry:

Idaho has one of the smallest marketing budgets among western states. Add to this very limited national awareness, being surround by the nation's best travel marketers and US Travel's Project Time Off Initiative where hundreds of millions of vacation days go unused, Idaho accepted the challenge to entice travelers to choose the Gem State for a summer vacation in 2016. Dubbed 18Summers, the campaign sought to connect with parents to remind them they only get 18 summers to make lifelong memories with their kids, while they're still kids.

The initial 18Summers campaign, launched in 2014, centered around the value and importance of spending time together as seen through the eyes of Idahoans reminiscing of childhood vacations. The 2015 effort brought these storylines to life by following these same families across the state and capturing their adventures.

Based on the successes of this two-year foundation, the 2016 program levered the same video and web content but invested in a larger media and outreach plan.

Business goal:
-Increase lodging collections by 10% by Aug 31 2016. To measure the increase, the KPI was lodging collections measured by the Idaho Tax Commission.

Marketing goal:
-Increase consumption of media and website content by 10% by Aug 31 2016. The KPIs were defined as website activity measured by Google Analytics and paid media results measured by Tableau.

The campaign launched March 1 at https://visitidaho.org/18summers. Promoted through an integrated media plan that ran through Aug 31, the campaign sought to share the raw power and emotion of getting away and spending together in Idaho during summer 2016.

The target audience was:
Families (adults 30-49, skew female) who reside in the Northwest and Intermountain West with kids 5-17. They enjoy active lifestyles and recreation, have incomes of $110,000 plus and work full-time. They take multiple trips each year, are mobile savvy and live in urban centers and suburbs. This audience group also includes Idaho families.

Fly and drive markets were selected as those within an uncomplicated days journey to Idaho (8 hours, ~800 miles) and included Seattle/Western Washington, Tri-Cities, Yakima, Spokane, Portland, Ogden, Salt Lake and Phoenix.

Campaign Strategy:

The 18Summers complete campaign comprised of the following elements. All components launched at the same time (March 1) and were tracked and optimized using weekly and monthly dashboards.

-Responsive landing page at https://visitidaho.org/18summers. This was our main call to action for all paid media and outreach. It featured a statewide image gallery, six summer travel itineraries (Trip Guides) and four "documemory" videos. We also integrated Idaho's social media channels and added other vacation planning tools to round out the planning experience.

-Online display banners and video ads (multiple sizes) ran with partners ranging from Facebook, Google Display Network, YouTube, Sojern, Adara and TripAdvisor. The video ads comprised of three versions - a :15 second teaser, a :30 second trailer and 2:20 minute, long-form episode. Careful attention was taken to ensure we tapped the strengths of each media partner and their respective networks and re-targeting abilities.

Partners included Idaho's ad agency Drake Cooper, who developed the overall program and produced the creative deliverables (display, online videos, itineraries), landing page, media and outreach plans.

As the campaign ran several months, the evaluation and measurement process was fairly straightforward. The agency/client team held weekly and monthly check-ins where they evaluated detailed website dashboards and media reports. These recaps, along with the systems and tools below, were used to evaluate the campaign.

-Monthly lodging reports from the Idaho State Tax Commission
-Daily, weekly and monthly website reports from Google Analytics
-Performance reports from Tableau were summarized and analyzed for each individual media partner, then together as a whole to review performance (including shortcomings), discover trends and to ensure full delivery of media impressions.

Results:

In addition to delivering the campaign on time and budget, the top line results were as follows

Business goal:
Surpassed business goal of increasing tax collections by 8%. Total 2016 collections were just under $10M, up +13.41% over 2015. At the time, this was the highest bed tax total Idaho Tourism had collected in its history.

Marketing website goals:
Consumption of website content also increased over the 10% goal:
Sessions: +46%
Unique users: +36%
Pageviews: +20%
Bounce Rate: 0% (flat)
Avg Time on Page: +11%
Goal conversions (intent to travel): +52%

Paid media generated over 148M impressions with no make-goods or missed deliveries. This was +97% compared to the previous year.

Total investment for the campaign, including web development, production and all paid media totaled $1,694,250.

Why This Is A Finalist: 

The 18 Summers campaign taps into an emotional and visceral component of the human spirit. Whether you’re a parent or not, this campaign captures the heart of why spending time with family is so important and connects the destination in a smart way to these emotions.