Today, everybody is modeling themselves as their own mini-Magellan. Pop open your Instagram feed and you’ll see snapshots in front of Macchu Pichu, the Eiffel Tower, and other landmarks shared as a badge of honor. In the time between these journeys, you’ll view an endless stream of wines, cheeses, spices, and art that bring the adventure home. As a growing share of millennials choose to spend their money on experiences instead of “things,” and baby boomers begin their “trips of a lifetime” in retirement, travel and trade has become more and more central to more and more localities.
Airfare prices are down. Roaming charges are disappearing. Travel reward points are piling up. GPS is effectively perfect. Cameras keep getting better. Travel has never been easier or more enjoyable. And honestly, most places are really, really interesting. The iron is hot, and its time to strike with campaigns and tools that help make your place shine.
Using a full toolbox of web, mobile, and social strategies, we help you surface what makes your destination or products uniquely awesome. Our goal is to help tell a story that makes it impossible for customers to resist jumping in as the protagonist.
You don’t need to provide a phonebook listing of every restaurant, attraction, or offering – there are companies like Yelp, Google, and Foursquare that wake up every day doing just that. Your intimate local knowledge is your competitive advantage, make hay with that.
We all love to brag. As customers explore your products and locations, empower them to become social ambassadors with photo-ops and other viral assets that become valuable “social media ammunition.”
There are two major phases of any adventure: the planning and the doing. Each has a distinctly different set of information and functionality needs, so identify and plan which stage to target accordingly.
In an ever-more-connected and homogeneous world, what is it that makes your place special? Give me a true experience that I can’t get from just a YouTube video or Wikipedia article.
Directly related to the first point, what you can provide is a uniquely tailored experience for the explorer. People are busy and distracted, and despite all their talk about choice and options, research shows the consumers are happiest when provided with a smaller, curated sampling. Provide those “perfect day” itineraries and you’ll be their hero.
Paint the most vibrant image of your destination, and empower your audience to envision your home as part of their own biography. Captivating imagery and evocative language are the essential building blocks for any successful place-making marketing program.
Rising tourism and trade lifts all boats. It’s not a zero-sum game, work with your neighbors and partners to form mutually-beneficial coalitions that will create meaningful results for all of your community’s stakeholders.
