Destinations Council Destiny Awards > Branding and Integrated Marketing Campaign: Destination Marketing Budget $2.5 Million to $5 Million

Discover Long Island/Long Island MacArthur Airport Marketing Collaboration

About This Entry:

Discover Long Island and Long Island MacArthur Airport teamed up to create an industry-leading campaign targeting travelers in the Baltimore and Washington D.C. markets. This partnership marks the first time that Long Island's Tourism Bureau has teamed up with its regional airport to promote tourism to travelers outside of New York State.

The new, multi-faceted cooperative marketing initiative, “Short Flight. Long Island.” slogan is designed to build awareness of Long Island as a destination, and increase demand for MacArthur Airport as a go-to hub.

The overall objectives included an increase visitation to Long Island, an increase use of Long Island MacArthur Airport for access to Long Island and to raise awareness about Long Island as a destination and ISP.

The campaign incorporates experiential, digital and social media assets, with highlights including a Baltimore–Washington International Airport Wi-Fi take-over, advertising platforms at highly trafficked Metro stations across the D.C. and Maryland regions, and bike share kiosk promotion in the D.C. market. A campaign landing page with the URL, shortflightlongisland.com, was implemented with unique tracking capabilities in order to capture click-rate metrics. In addition, targeted digital and social media components were integrated into the campaign to maximize visibility in the market.

The Baltimore / Washington D.C. market will serve as the initial target region for the campaign based on research, population, and frequency of service. Key findings from leading market research provider, Brand IQ, influenced the campaign, solidifying the need for an impactful perception analysis to generate positive awareness with travelers from the intended regions.

Campaign Strategy:

Discover Long Island® and Long Island MacArthur Airport took over sponsorship of the free Wi-Fi at Baltimore–Washington International Airport to further promote campaign messaging. Travelers in the airport looking to sign into the Wi-Fi were first served campaign creative advertising then given the option to click directly through to the Discover Long Island® website’s Land on Long Island page. Creative was implemented for mobile phone, tablet and laptop users.

To increase frequency and reach to potential visitors, advertising in heavy commuter locations was an essential anchor to our media mix. Strategically impactful placements were placed on screens at targeted high traffic platforms with long commuter dwell times utilizing the Metro’s ON Smart Media digital platform liveboards in Washington and Md. Each of the 65” vertical screens will run static spots of up to 15 seconds in length on a 90 second loop.

Bike sharing is an innovative transportation program that has gained traction in most major cities around the United States. Notably, Bike Share is increasingly becoming a part of the urban commute in Washington DC, providing high traffic areas to place messaging. Bikeshare kiosk advertising was placed in six separate locations in high traffic areas of Washington.

Executing a digital component is key to any effective media strategy and ensures the ability to directly track and measure results. Working with TravelSpike, static banner placements were implemented compatible across desktop, mobile and tablet devices. Advertisements were placed on premium travel websites and then retargeted those who have viewed it, choosing to follow only visitors who have a demonstrated digital history of searching for travel and vacation destinations like Long Island.

Reaching the right audience to cut through the sea of advertising online users encounter each day is key to driving campaign performance. For this campaign, ADARA targeted consumers who are specifically searching for flights to any of the following airports: LaGuardia Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport and Long Island MacArthur Airport then serve them retargeting ads of the campaign to drive awareness for ISP in addition to hotels in the same markets.

Results:

Preliminary and post market research totaled at $46,000 and the campaign media buy totaled at $134,000. $20,000 was originally budgeted for creative assets but we were able to save that cost with in-house production of all creative assets. Total budgeted from each organization (matching funds from each organization were used for this campaign – MacArthur Airport and Discover Long Island) for the campaign was $100,000 each and total spend to date is $180,000.

The campaign is still currently underway to date, the following are guaranteed/estimated impressions based on our strategic tactics outlined above. We will also be conducted a post-campaign study to see how we truly moved the needle in these markets.

Why This Is A Finalist: 

This is a playful campaign that meets the objective to build interest and awareness of Long Island as a destination. The result was that it makes Long Island look like a vacation destination. Overall, it was a strong campaign, with clear objectives and a thoughtful strategy. The tagline—"Short Flight. Long Island.”—is catchy and memorable, and highlights one major selling point for the city—proximity—among its target audiences.