Visit North Carolina campaigns earn travel industry accolades

Tourism marketing gets more and more competitive every year, making it especially rewarding for three campaigns we produced on behalf of Visit North Carolina to earn recognition at the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association Internationals’ 61^st annual Adrian Awards.

Beauty Here

Our Beauty Here television campaign reminded travelers of North Carolina’s inherent beauty and welcoming hospitality. The ads focused on the traveler experience and the depth of emotion that comes from the state’s breathtaking visual appeal.

As a result of the effort, traffic to VisitNC.com grew 72 percent year-over-year. Atlanta and Nashville – two of the biggest target markets for North Carolina tourism – saw 123 percent and 116 percent growth respectively.

Reclaim Your Weekend

The Reclaim Your Weekend campaign celebrated the centennials of the North Carolina State Parks and the U.S. National Park Service, encouraging visitation through a complete consumer campaign that included television, radio, print and out-of-home advertising.

The TV spots juxtaposed mundane weekend activities like doing laundry with an outdoor adventure or scenic counterpart. Radio cleverly called listeners out for their weekend routines and challenged them to enjoy parks as a better alternative. Print and out-of-home ads used iconic parks signs with messages encouraging people to take advantage of North Carolina’s abundant natural resources.

The campaign contributed to a 9 percent spike in park visitation that helped reach a record-breaking 18.8 million state park visitors for the year. Online, there were 11 times more visits to parks-related web content from launch versus the prior year.

Summer of Now

Our Summer of Now campaign inspired impromptu trips to North Carolina by showcasing easy-to-access locations across the state. The digital campaign used a combination of paid and organic social posts, 360-degree videos, ephemeral stories, micro-influencers, e-newsletters, website content and data-gathering Jebbit survey experiences to engage potential travelers at multiple touch points.

Total impressions for the campaign topped 8.5 million with 120,398 engagements, indicating the impromptu travel message resonated and built travel intent with the target audience.

The team has been hard at work developing a new campaign for Visit North Carolina, set to debut April 2. And while future award recognition would be nice, we’ll be more excited if the new work continues the trend of boosting demand and tourism spending in the Tar Heel State we’re proud to call home.