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From Great Loss Comes Great Opportunity

BACKGROUND

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 will go down as one of the most devastating years in history for the travel and tourism sector.

But from unparalleled loss, comes unparalleled opportunity. So as we entered a new year in 2021– and as news of vaccines began to offer the first genuine hope of a return to normalcy — we knew it was time to nudge our beloved city of Louisville out of hibernation and toward enabling its rebound strategy.

Industry

Destination Marketing

Services

Branding
Public Relations
Market Research

THE CHALLENGE

By Q1 2021, leisure traveler priorities, values and behaviors had fundamentally changed. Unsurprisingly, they were no longer receptive to hard-sells, aggressive messaging or time-sensitive CTA’s. At first, consumers reported having high levels of anxiety about returning to travel and that they were spending much longer periods of time in the “in consideration” stage before actually making plans or booking trips.

These new market dynamics told us that what leisure travelers really needed from destination marketing was more convincing, more coaxing, and most importantly, more reassurance. They needed to be reintroduced to the worthwhile destinations around them, and needed to be truly inspired before they could start travelling confidently again.

OUR ANSWER

A “Prep-The-Market” Awareness Campaign

Timing: March 1 — April 11, 2021 

* Deploy ahead of 2021 Derby-season

* Align awareness messages with gradual process of re-opening

* Tap into the surging opportunity around late-spring/early summer travel bookings

Objectives:

  • Remind people who we are, and what we’re all about BEFORE we’re asking them to act.

  • Get the city of Louisville back online and in front of consumers at a time when we know they’re dreaming about future travel, positioning the city top-of-mind for when people are eventually ready to travel again in the near future.

STRATEGY

Lean into hi-awareness, impressions-focused digital tactics:

  • Connected TV 
  • Digital Video
  • Digital Display
  • Paid Social [FB/IG]

Targeting included road-trippers and travel-interest groups; re-targeting included people who’ve visited Louisville in the past, as well as people who engaged with the campaign throughout its duration.

DIGITAL DISPLAY

DIGITAL VIDEO

SOCIAL

Results

Louisville Tourism website traffic

New Users

15,500+

Total Pageviews

28,500+
March 1 – April 12, 2021

Impressions

CTV

604K

Digital Display

1.5M

Digital Video

465K

Facebook & Instagram

7.3M
Driving over 3.3K landing page views

Additionally, because this “prep-the-market” campaign was an awareness-forward endeavor, we also analyzed consumer intent-behavior by monitoring search engine queries for one hour following exposure to our ads. What we found was that consumers who’d seen our ad content frequently used terms and phrases like “road trip,” “Louisville,” and “bourbon,” frequently navigating onward to relevant, like-minded websites like CNN.com/Travel, TravelAndLeisure.com, and TravelChannel.com.