Focus Area: Travel and Trade
Getting People
To Explore
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.
I Love NY
Since early 2014, we have worked with Empire State Development on the creation of the brand-new I Love NY mobile app for iOS and Android. In a modern, clean design, the award-winning app organizes thousands of New York State attractions, food and drink listings, and accommodations in an easy-to-use, in-market tool for the smartphone-toting traveler.
I Love NY is now the single most popular destination marketing organization app in the world and we continue to work with New York State on improving content integrations, optimizing for out-of-state users, and developing a world-class tablet experience.
Wines from Spain
Though it’s an ensemble cast, the wines of Spain all share an undeniable charisma. This bold, progressive, and exciting spirit has lifted the nation’s wine towards the top of imports, and placed countless bottles firmly at the center of lively dinner tables.
We worked with the Trade Commission of Spain to build a brand-new digital home for the nation’s exceptional wine. This new site includes a deep well of content – from profiles of the country’s dozens of unique grapes, to a comprehensive vintage chart to aide discerning palates. With custom templates for news, events, pairings, travel guides, and more, the new site is a versatile platform for their ongoing content initiatives.
Louis Armstrong House Museum
One of the most famous performers of the 20th century, Louis Armstrong chose the working-class neighborhood of Corona, Queens to call his home. Preserved as it was when the jazz legend passed away forty years ago, his home is now a pristine relic of an American icon.
The museum's website was also a relic, of a different sort, when we started working with them. Satchmo was a vivacious character, and his website needed to capture that spirit. We combed through thousands of photos, audio clips, and more to design a beautiful new home for his beautiful house.
Destination Midtown
As more of NYC's 60 million visitors spend time exploring the city’s other diverse neighborhoods, it’s crucial for the Empire State Building and other top attractions that Midtown – the core of the metaphorical Big Apple – retains its primacy. To help achieve this goal, we have worked with the Empire State Building and its friends in the newly formed Destination Midtown Alliance to design a brand-new mobile tourism initiative.
The Destination Midtown app is centered around a series of walking tours, taking users up and down these historic blocks with step-by-step local guides.
7 Keys To Inspiring Exploration
1. Do What you can do Best
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.
2. Give them Something to Share
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.”
3. In-Market or Out-of-Market?
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.
4. Surface Authenticity
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.
5. Design the “Best Day Ever”
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.
6. Make it Real
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.
7. Embrace Coordination
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.
WHAT YOU'VE DONE.
