Destinations Council Destiny Awards > Branding and Integrated Marketing Campaign: Destination Marketing Budget Less Than $500,000

Bardstown Tourism

About This Entry:

With the insight that Millennials are the driving force in authentic travel experiences, we sought to target males ages 25–34 and introduce Bardstown as a unique and immersive bourbon-tasting experience with an authentically local vibe.
 
To optimize exposure with a small budget, we focused on metro markets with populations of more than 1.5 million that are a one-to-three hour drive from Bardstown. In the Louisville, Lexington, Cincinnati and Nashville (digital only) markets, we leveraged digital media and out-of-home opportunities to reach neighborhoods where our target Millennial males eat, drink and play.

Campaign Strategy:

The campaign creative drove home a single, focused message: Bourbon comes from Bardstown. While the current “bourbon boom” has flooded the market with new craft distillers and bottlers across the country, we wanted to remind our younger drinkers that best bourbon comes from the place that has been making it for over a century – Bardstown, Kentucky.

Combined with a retro-hip visual treatment, this message was plastered over billboards, posters, bus shelters, t-shirts and, well, pretty much anything we could get our hands on, including table tents and coasters in target bars and restaurants. New photography by a Kentucky native brought Bardstown to life in a captivating way for online audiences who weren’t familiar with the town’s scenic beauty.

We ran paid search and native ads for this campaign. Through a co-op sponsorship with Kentucky Tourism, two sponsored content articles were also featured on their site for a year.

The effectiveness of the campaign was evaluated based on website traffic. Traffic was segmented by acquisition channel and digital efforts (display, native, social, and paid search) along with organic search (for out-of-home). Outbound local business links were also tracked as further interest evaluation metrics to visit Bardstown, Kentucky.

Results:

Our digital efforts drove 23,490 sessions to the website, which accounted for 23.8 percent of the total traffic during that time period. At the same time, organic search traffic increased by 23.6 percent year over year. Our efforts not only assisted in driving traffic to our website, but the digital campaign was able to drive 784 sessions to local business websites, helping bolster the local economy.

Our out-of-home campaign even got picked up by one of Louisville’s local news stations (Wave3) for “taking over Louisville” in a big and noticeable way. This was all accomplished with a spend of $142,332 on digital and out-of-home, making the campaign a great success on a small budget.

Why This Is A Finalist: 

This execution of this campaign was clear and strategic, and was a focused effort targeted to a specific niche. The effort to create an identity within the greater Kentucky bourbon market is perfect for this destination—the tactics were authentic and defendable, and it captures the character of the destination. The market saturation was great, and the focus on one aspect of Bardstown—the bourbon—was a perfect choice for their stated audience. The campaign was executed well with measurable results, and the methodology of the campaign was clear and actionable. The simplicity of the campaign is what made it so innovative, and it produced great results! Bardstown got great bang for their buck on results and spend. The marketing channels were perfect based on their target demographic. The metrics were measurable and showed definitively how the campaign performed.