Destinations Council Destiny Awards > Printed Collateral Materials

Meet Your Match

About This Entry:

For the past three years, Visit Omaha has invited meeting planners to experience Omaha through a traveling exhibit. The award-winning tradeshow booth is a re-creation of the city’s historic Old Market Entertainment District, known for innovative restaurants, original steakhouses, local pubs, quaint cafes and jazz clubs.

The booth is used at trade shows, including the American Society of Association Executives Annual Meeting & Expo, where Omaha's exhibit was one of 700 at that event. These trade shows provide our sales team an opportunity to meet with decision-makers who are looking for a meeting/event destination.

To keep meeting planners coming to the Visit Omaha booth every year, the team develops creative ways to boost attendance. The goal is to entice planners to spend time at the booth allowing members of our sales team to interact with planners. While the booth itself hasn't changed, how we entice attendees to visit the booth is different every year, and that's the challenge - how do we keep it fresh, creative and meaningful year after year.

This year the team wanted to capitalize on the crazy sock trend. It’s not uncommon to find a conservative dresser wearing the colorful, trendy, footwear. Visit Omaha wanted to capture the attention of the meeting planners prior to the conference - 200 meeting planners with business that would be a good fit in Omaha were targeted. Each meeting planner was mailed a single sock designed with colorful info-graphics touting Omaha attributes. Each sock was attached to a card that read, “Meet Your Match. Bring your sock to the Omaha booth to find its match … and meet yours.” The purpose of the mailer was to give planners a reason to stop by the booth. A single sock was also passed out to other attendees during the conference to encourage them to stop by the booth.

At the booth, the planners could taste Omaha steaks, sample beer, and get the matching sock. This provided a fun way for the team to engage with planners, and provided planners with a takeaway they could wear, and thus share Omaha's attributes with others.

Campaign Strategy:

Visit Omaha wanted to capitalize on the colorful sock trend in a way that would be meaningful. The socks had to feature Omaha attributes and be eye-catching enough that planners would wear them and get noticed - ankle level billboards for Omaha.

Visit Omaha worked with Clark Creative Group, a local advertising agency, to develop the concept and design the socks. The socks had to look colorful and trendy but also promote Omaha as a great meeting destination. Infographics depicting Omaha's world-renowned zoo, the square footage of Omaha's convention center, number of hotels, and Omaha's food scene were all used mixed in with words like "Friendly", "Accessible", and "Entertaining". The socks also needed a creative print mailer that explained why Visit Omaha was sending a single sock, and how the attendee could obtain the match.

The agency also helped Visit Omaha find the manufacturer who would produce colorful, quality socks at an affordable price. The socks were produced with a black background to identify our "targeted" planners and a white background for the socks that were handed out to "general" planners.

Meeting planners were encouraged to share their new fashion statement on social media. Many of them did so on Twitter and Instagram.

The Visit Omaha Sales team tracked the number of "targeted" and "general" meeting planners and decision makers who stopped by the Visit Omaha booth during the ASAE conference.

Results:

In years past, Visit Omaha typically saw 200-300 attendees stop by the Visit Omaha booth. The Old Market exhibit along with the sock promotion helped bring a total of 843 people from different organizations to the booth - the highest attendance ever.

A total of 145 of the 200 "targeted" planners visited the booth to pick up their socks, those who didn't stop by were sent their matching sock after the show, allowing for an additional touch point. A total of 517 "general" planners visited the booth to meet their match. A total of 78% of booth attendance can be attributed to the sock campaign.

Based on analytics collected from Twitter and Instagram, social media posts about the socks reached an audience of 2,435, and 81 people engaged with the post meaning they either liked it, commented on it or shared it.

Cost of the 200 pre-show mailers which included the custom mailer, socks, and postage was $5,328.89. The additional socks and promotional cards handed out during the event were purchased at a cost of $1,273.75.

Why This Is A Finalist: 

Judges felt this was a very creative and fun way to create engagement with potential visitors to Omaha, and the data supports it. Visit Omaha capitalized on an interesting trend, and activated it well for social shares. They had very clear goals and a method to reach it and it worked well! The sock itself is well designed as is the packaging for the sock. It was a very innovate way to engage audiences at a conference. This was a great case study in grabbing attention and getting people to engage with them. They had nice engagement offline and online, and a nice way to shift the conversation to social.