Destinations Council Destiny Awards > Branding and Integrated Marketing Campaign: Destination Marketing Budget $5 Million to $10 Million

San Francisco Travel Association

Summer of Love 50th Anniversary Celebration

About This Entry:

In 1967, thousands of young people converged on San Francisco during a social phenomenon that was coined the "Summer of Love." Freedom, inclusiveness, peace and love were celebrated by those who became known as "hippies." In 2017, San Francisco marked the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love with citywide events, including concerts, exhibitions and festivals. To encourage visitors to travel to San Francisco during this celebration, San Francisco Travel, the official destination marketing organization for the City by the Bay, launched a prolonged, strategic marketing campaign focused on the once-in-a-lifetime value of experiencing San Francisco at this specific moment.

The Summer of Love campaign targeted all markets, including consumer, business, trade, and media. It was composed of fresh, innovative digital and real-world assets including a signature series of illustrated faces of the era, as well as historic images from well-known photographers. It was an international effort, with the main office in San Francisco coordinating with representatives in the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. The campaign also included a national paid media push targeting key B2C and B2B audiences. It highlighted the unique values, experiences, and communities that visitors can experience only in San Francisco.

There were five business objectives for this campaign, which were to drive domestic and international leisure travel bookings; encourage corporate meeting planners to book their events in San Francisco during this special time, and use special venues that had embraced the Summer of Love theme; unify our partners in the city and across the region behind a single campaign that would serve their business needs; generate media coverage of the various events happening throughout the city as part of this commemoration; and remind target audiences of the innovative, creative nature of San Francisco, and how this movement set the stage for so many revolutionary ideas that followed.

Campaign Strategy:

San Francisco Travel utilized its long-standing partnerships with city institutions, chiefly the California Historical Society and San Francisco International Airport, to expand the reach of the campaign both locally and globally.

In October of 2016, San Francisco Travel launched the campaign with a Summer of Love microsite where visitors could find original content, including historic information, trip ideas, events, and booking opportunities. San Francisco Travel also themed its spring and summer digital visitor guide with the Summer of Love and created both B2C and B2B national paid media campaigns.

San Francisco Travel hosted a number of events in 2017 that embraced the Summer of Love theme. From media dinners and sales missions to the association’s 107th Annual Luncheon, the Summer of Love fingerprint was present across every department's efforts. The largest such event was held at San Francisco International Airport on May 13, 2017, celebrating the release of the famous song “San Francisco (Wear Flowers In Your Hair).” Together with the airport, United Airlines, and other partners, we turned Terminal 3 East into a hippie happening, complete with live music, activities, and, of course, flowers to greet arriving passengers. Journalists were hosted that weekend on a Summer of Love FAM that garnered millions of media impressions.

San Francisco Travel took bold, new steps at involving both its partners and the public in the campaign. We encouraged partner businesses to get creative with their offerings to visitors, offering guidelines on how to create special hotel packages or themed experiences. Visitors could tune in to our social media channels to learn simple, actionable ways that they could “Share The Love” and spread the San Francisco spirit in their own communities. The San Francisco Travel team did their part, partnering with the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department on a cleanup of Golden Gate Park, the site of so many legendary moments during the summer of 1967.

The campaign was evaluated on a number of criteria, with a focus on website traffic, partner participation, and earned media. Other KPIs included social media reach and engagement, booked room nights, and attraction bookings.

Results:

A campaign of this size and scope was a first for San Francisco Travel, and all indicators point to success. Multiple departments contributed funding to the overall budget of approximately $650,000 for the Summer of Love campaign.

Digital and social media achievements, as of June 28, 2017, included 130,000 unique web visits contributing $4.4 million in economic impact. This is based on a 2015 Destination Analysts web economic Impact study valuing each unique visit at $34.20 in economic impact. There were 6.9 million Facebook impressions with over 200,000 engagements,105,000 total engagements and over 500,000 views attributed to original video of the Conservatory of Flowers' Summer of Love-themed light art installation. There were 68,000 views on Facebook of original "Flowers In Your Hair Day" video content, and 67,000 Instagram impressions in the first week of the "Share Your Love" story series.

In terms of media, we saw an estimated 3.475 billion global media impressions from this campaign, including national TV news coverage of "Flowers In Your Hair Day." The estimated global media value was $3.7 million. Ten of our hotel partners offered specifically themed accommodation packages to travelers for the duration of the Summer of Love campaign, and over 70 businesses, non-profits, cultural organizations, and government entities joined as official campaign partners. Various major city businesses, from Macy's to the Hotel Nikko San Francisco, used San Francisco Travel's Summer of Love assets for in-store promotions and on hotel real estate.

Our UK event produced 16 CEO radio interviews, and nine media at the Summer of Love Media FAM. As a result, we received 1,202 room nights from Virgin Holiday Bookings, which is an increase of 9 percent year-over-year.

Why This Is A Finalist: 

50 years have passed since the “Summer of Love,” an era-defining time that brought the world music, art, fashion and ways of thinking that changed all that followed. To celebrate this important anniversary, San Francisco Travel Association brought highlights from those heady days into the present, giving those who weren’t there the opportunity to experience it for themselves.

The way San Francisco draws on historical documents, archival footage and photographs, married to graphics based on art of the era, was a great strategy. The campaign makes good use of available resources from other institutions and departments. Key partners of the program are very well defined and nicely integrated into the campaign. The vision, strategy and objectives are clearly defined, and the execution was well thought out and quite effective. The results are quantifiable across many channels and the numbers are impressive.