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

"You Can, in Portland" Integrated Marketing Campaign

About This Entry:

In Portland, you can be who you want to be. And you can dress the way you want to dress. Here, you can be a serious sports fan, or an ironic one. Or a pinball wizard, or something between. You can love tattoos or get tattooed, or eat world-famous food from a food cart or a four-star restaurant from someone who is most likely tattooed too. You can hear world-renowned music, and you can hear music that's so new the rest of the world hasn't heard it yet. You can shop at a bookstore so big you might decide you want to spend your entire day indoors. Or you can bike, hike or take public transit anywhere worth getting. And when you get there, you can just stand perfectly still, and chances are something interesting might pass you by - and it might even have a bagpipe. You can enjoy handmade crafts and craft brews, and sometimes both at the same time. Whatever it is that floats your boat - just know that, You Can, in Portland.

After several years of successful advertising to the regional drive market, Travel Portland was looking to expand to longer-haul markets to motivate new travel interest and longer trips. To speak to these travelers in these new markets, we partnered with our agency, Wieden + Kennedy, to generate new messaging that would resonate and motivate trips to Portland.

"You Can, in Portland" emerged to communicate to travelers that Portland offers a unique set of values and experiences and allows them to fully express and experience their passions. The campaign targeted "active adventurers" (people who were predisposed to enjoy authentic, local experiences and active vacations packed with discovery rather than prepackaged tours to large-scale visitor attractions) in San Francisco, Phoenix and Minneapolis. Our markets represented both cultural similarities and a chance for Portland to offer a unique destination experience.

Campaign Strategy:

To tell the "You Can" story—and convey the spirit of Portland's hand-crafted creativity, kaleidoscopic possibility, come-as-you-are openness, and welcome -- Travel Portland and Wieden + Kennedy partnered with a local stop-motion animation studio, HouseSpecial, to create a series of cinematic stop-motion videos.

The animation studio created 30, 15 and six second stories showing two "active adventurers" (read: charming, hand-made felt figurines) exploring and enjoying our city. The 6-second spots were sequentially targeted to consumers who had already seen the 15 or 30 across YouTube. Video spots also played in key real-time broadcasts, digital TV and cinema.

The inspiring video spots were supported by a digital "You-can-o-mizer" that allowed visitors to spin a wheel and outfit a friendly Sasquatch (our favorite Portland personality) with a rotating assortment of clothing items and other accessories. Each item linked to a different piece of web content that highlighted distinct visitor experiences—and the user's unique combination of styles and interests. Users could also share their personalized Sasquatch across social media, thus driving even more engagement with the campaign.

To generate media coverage, we partnered with Wieden + Kennedy and LDPR, our New York-based PR firm, to create literal "cans of Portland." These pint-sized paint cans came in five varieties, each filled with an array of Portland-made products that highlighted a different theme: bites, sips, makers, outdoors and an all-encompassing can of Portland. Cans were sent to media in our target markets, and distributed at a large-scale media event in New York City.
The campaign also included prominent out-of-home billboards—featuring photographs of the handcrafted items that populated the stop-motion videos—in all three markets.

A content partnership with Chefsfeed extended the campaign to foodies across the country via an engaging, dynamic video series, featuring food-focused collaborations between Portland chefs and their counterparts in our target markets.

Social media and search extended the reach of the campaign, while online travel agency partnerships helped drive visitors through the booking funnel.

Results:

Our efforts reaped immediate and impressive results: According to an ad-accountability study by Longwoods International, the campaign generated $85 million in incremental visitor spending—and 411,726 incremental trips -- from our target markets of Phoenix, San Francisco and Minneapolis.

The campaign also generated an impressive ROI: The $85 million in incremental spending represents a 22.9:1 return on our investment (our all-in costs were $3.7 million, the majority of which were dedicated to the media buy, including social and search).

To achieve this ROI, all elements of this integrated campaign performed well. The campaign media generated 46.2 million impressions, 13.7 million video views and 69,500 clicks. Chefsfeed delivered 7,049,866 impressions (141 percent of purchased impressions), showcasing the power of strong video content. The campaign videos also performed excellently on social, delivering views at a cost of just one cent per view. The public relations effort generated an additional 4.6 million impressions and 10 media visits to Portland. Key media placements included stories in the San Francisco Chronicle, Arizona Foothills Magazine and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Lastly, visitors to the website spun the You-can-o-mizer 30,000 times, and over 200 shares were initiated from the campaign hub.

Why This Is A Finalist: 

This was a great overall campaign with great design elements and cross platform/partner/agency efforts. The campaign was quirky, funny, authentic and inviting, generating the numbers and image of "place" as intended by the creators. The production values were outstanding.