Transcript
Will: [00:00:01] Alright, broadcasting live from the e-tourism summit our virtual series. Wrapping up our first week of our virtual series and I want to make sure to thank everybody for your participation or active engagement. And it would have been a really different, unique e-tourism summit this year. I certainly wish we were all live and in-person in Seattle like we had originally planned. But one of the things that all of us learn is we have to be adaptive and we have to work with what we've got. So it's been a fantastic week of absolutely amazing panels and presentations. And again, I want to thank all of you for taking the time to participate with us. I am really excited about our conversation today.
So with that, I want to put a big shout-out to our sponsor today, Adam Stoker with Relic. So with that, I'd like to just introduce an amazing panel that we've got today. And maybe if we could just really quickly go around the table and introduce yourselves and then we'll get to the programming. Matt, do you want to start with you?
Matt: [00:01:09] Sure, happy to. Thanks, Will. Thanks, everyone for the opportunity to be here. My name is Matt Borud. I'm the Marketing and Innovation Administrator for the Idaho Department of Commerce. In that role, my team and I are responsible for the Idaho Tourism program. So we're excited to be here, and I appreciate the opportunity.
Will: [00:01:28] Thanks for being here. Ali?
Ali: [00:01:29] Hi. Ali Daniel, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Visit Seattle. I oversee cultural, tourism, public relations, marketing, creative services in our international group that's a bit on hold right now but we are excited for them to come back online soon. Thanks for having me.
Will: [00:01:47] Awesome. Thank you, Ali. And Alison.
Allison: [00:01:50] Good afternoon. Hi. I am Allison Schultz and I am the Founder, Principal Chief Navigator of Mile Marker 630. I actually created my own business about three years ago after having about 15 years in the tourism industry. And I really wanted to launch an agency that focused on brand partnerships for the travel industry. I really feel like we could do a better job of partnering with brands and national brands that are not necessarily endemic to travel. So I've been working on that.
But in the last year, I have joined forces with Visit North Carolina, and I'm overseeing all of their marketing and strategy. And it's been an incredible time during this pandemic and really thrilled to be a part of it.
Will: [00:02:39] That's awesome. And thank you guys so much for being here today and for contributing to this. The pre-conversations have been really fascinating. And here we go our host and sponsor, Adam Stoker. Adam, thank you for getting back online. This is an incredible conversation about land positioning in a post COVID environment, and I'm really excited to hear this conversation and then move it forward. So with that Adam, I'm going to turn it back over to you, and again. Thank you to Relic. Thank you for your sponsorship and support for this event and really looking forward to the conversation.
Adam: [00:03:19] Yeah, absolutely. We're thrilled to be involved and sorry for the technical difficulties here. Of course, our internet goes down. Just as we're about to start this webinar. But that's kind of how this COVID process has gone at different times. So I'm sure everybody is familiar with that. Like Will said, I'm Adam Stoker, President CEO of Relic. I also host the Destination Marketing Podcast and so many of you have probably heard me from there, but this is going to be a great conversation today. I'm excited to be here with each of you. One of the first things that I wanted to talk about is as we've gotten into this, the situation with COVID and how it affected the travel industry. What we want to do moving forward is to make sure that we have effective messaging that doesn't kind of all look the same as we move into the next phase of recovery.
And so I wanted to show what could happen if we don't be cautious of that. What happens when everyone is trying to solve the same problem with their marketing, right? So what we've done is we've pulled together a group of panelists that I feel give great advice as to how to make sure that your messaging is on point and unique and authentic moving forward into the recovery phase of the pandemic.
And so to start with, I'd love to have each of you kind of talk a little bit about maybe some of the creative and messaging you are or have been working on. And Ali, I'd like you to go first.
Ali: [00:04:43] Great. And I'm so bummed because we're in the middle of production for a new campaign right now but we'll show you what we've been working on and speak to that a little bit. As the home of domestic patient zero, we shut down probably quicker and stricter than a lot of destinations at least in the beginning. And so but we still wanted to remain top of mind, right? So we used the line “While travelers discouraged right now, dreaming is not.” We knew that people were in front of their computers consuming content more than ever before. So we took that opportunity to repackage a lot of our video. We used our e-newsletter. We created special editions because, as we all know, what people need right now is not a book now button, or at least back in March, in April, it wasn't book. Now it's like everyone on the planet was planning their next trip. So we wanted to give them information for that and about safety. Right? That is another big thing, which I'm sure we'll talk about quite a bit today. But just making sure that everyone knew what we were doing and when about safety precautions.
These were just a couple of examples of what we put out there. Travel won't be on hold forever, so start dreaming now. Seattle's patiently waiting for your return. We have very strict guidelines from our county and from our state about not promoting non-essential travel. So for a person that gets paid to promote non-essential travel, that was very hard. So we tried to again stay top of mind what consumers get our name out there in a positive spin. And then the one on the top left, “Ready to travel again, state local first.” That kind of is the pivot into – oh I said pivot. I told my boss I would not say pivot. That's our new direction into what we are encouraging, which again, we'll get into a little bit later. So that's what I got for now.
Adam: [00:06:37] Great. Thank you so much, Ali. And that that is great creative. Matt, let's dive into what you're working on.
Matt: [00:06:42] Yeah, thanks, Adam. Think in the same vein that Ali had talked about. It was really crazy to be travel marketers and be talking about not traveling to [Inaudible 00:06:55]. I mean, it's just this complete crazy shift and the same in the same way we're talking about not wanting to use the words Pivot, we talk a lot about authenticity, and I think that's maybe another overused phrase. But we really wanted to be authentic in the moment and recognize that there's a lot of challenges out there and that there's a lot of suffering, a lot of difficulties, and how can we provide maybe a little inspiration, a little aspiration for when we are able to travel and hopefully our lives resume in a positive way.
And so we initially kind of gone with a more of a concept of “See you soon in Idaho,” We've talked a lot about continuing to plan, continuing to dream, and that will be ready for you when the time is right. And for us, we've really benefited from the shift toward outdoor recreation and more interest in big open spaces. We have that in space. So putting that type of imagery out there for folks who may be are big in the outdoor recreation already, and this summer wouldn't change any of that. Or folks who maybe are new to spending time in the outdoors. Can we encourage folks to visit Idaho and experience those types of activities which maybe we have a little more propensity towards this year?
But always going back to making sure that everybody understands safety precautions. We, at our state level, certainly had some stay-at-home orders and things of that nature. But a lot of our decisions were left to local decision-makers, regional decision-makers. So that created a little bit of a unique situation there for us to be able to make sure travelers understood. You know, if you were going to be going to a certain part of the state, you may have some restrictions versus if you're in a different part of the state. And so making sure we were communicating that all is best that we could but trying to remain fun and inspirational as much as we could authentically was really kind of our priority.
Adam: [00:09:01] Great. Thanks, Matt. And last but not least, Ali, why don’t you share – or Allison. That's going to be hard for me. Why don't you share a little bit about what you're working on?
Allison: [00:09:01] You know, that's all right, Adam. I go by Alli, too, so I'll respond to whatever you call me. So inspiration. I love that both Ali and Matt are talking a lot about inspiration and very similar to what they both shared, representing Visit North Carolina we were completely shut down when the pandemic hit. In fact, it was only just last week that Governor Cooper allowed us to move into phase three. So since the pandemic hit in the middle of March, we really went to work to tap into some cares funds to create a campaign that would really instill consumer confidence and [00:10:00] our confidence and traveler confidence. So we launched a program that's called “Count on Me and See” and it’s incredible because it really taps into several organizations, the Restaurant and Lodging Association in the state, Health and Human Services that we're working directly with them and then NC State Extension, who created a full-on training program for those tourism businesses, restaurants, hotels, attractions to be able to take training and get a certification for it that we'd be able to go out and demonstrate a bit more of that. We're doing everything we can to create a safe environment for travel when travel comes back.
I wanted to share that that initiative we have all 100 counties participating in Count on Me and See, I think there are more than 60,000 businesses. We've been able to generate more than 1.5 billion media impressions about this effort, and we're getting a lot of attention for it being so stand out. But one thing that we hadn't done was really put a lot of media behind it. So we developed this media campaign where we put more than $4.5 million into it and we knew that there was so much. When you think about it, there was just so much fatigue about COVID. And Adam what you shared in your initial video, it's just everything being so somber that we decided that we were going to take an approach that was about educating, but also entertaining because we knew that from looking at research that travelers didn't want some authoritative approach on how they should behave, and follow those three W's.
So we decided to go with animation and we also decided to go with a jingle so we could really get stuck in the hearts and minds. Get a song and a jingle that just gets stuck. And people can't forget it. And we really believe in the power of music. And, one of the reasons we went with animation is because we were shut down in the state and we couldn't put production crews out there so this was just a significant way for us to get our message out.
Adam: [00:12:16] I think that is great creative. And I love the use of animation that you guys had their Ah, lot of fun. I wanted to show one of one.
Allison: [00:12:25] Oh, no, that was we understood that humor we wanted to take a playoff of both Walt Disney and Pixar and understand that we could use humor and, honestly, Sunny. That's the name of our character. He is not the sharpest tool in the shed, and he really does kind of represent how all of us have gone through this pandemic with the waves and media and what we’ve learned about the virus. And so we really wanted to be authentic about him. And so, yeah, this is how we've been stumbling through it. But once you get to the other side, you can live in a COVID world and travel doesn't have to stop. And it's just been such a parasite to our industry.
Adam: [00:13:12] Yeah, yeah, it's such a unique campaign. Really cool. One thing I wanted to show that’s something that we've been we're working on at Relic as well, and it's for one of our clients. And Utah is a little bit unique because I think we've been able to open up a little bit sooner than most destinations have. And so the campaign that we're going to show you is a little bit more geared towards direct response like, “Hey, it's time to travel.” And the people that have been visiting or that had been visiting Utah have been cooped up for so long that our message is the travel-related items in your garage or at your house are collecting dust. But it's the wrong kind of dust.
And so we've got a campaign called Upgrade Your Dust for Garfield County, Utah, which is Bryce Canyon Country. But anyway, that was a fun video for us. Let's move on now, to okay, moving forward. Those were all the thing I love about that is, those were kind of I would call them bridge campaigns like, “Hey, people can't come. So what are we going to do?” We're going to start moving into the full recovery phase of our messaging now as marketers for destinations, and I want to make sure that we have a good discussion around how do you craft your messaging in such a way that you're not going to be in one of those compilation ads in six months, right?
So let's start with authenticity. I know It's a little bit of a buzzword, but as far as being unique as a destination, it really is critical, especially as you look at messaging. And so I'm wondering and I'll actually start with Allison Schultz. We'll kind of go back around from the order we did before and Allison, why don't you talk to us a little bit about authenticity and how you look at how it shapes messaging?
Allison: [00:14:57] Yeah, I think authenticity really is everything. But to Matt's comment earlier, it's been something that we talk about a lot and maybe it's been overused. For a Visit NC, I would say, a very, very authentic brand that has started from, you know, those simple pleasures. And then it evolves into deeper connections and then where we are today richer experiences. We've been very authentic about that, but we know that as we move forward as you talk about that bridge campaign, Adam, that we cannot run the existing creative because one, our audience has changed, right? We're no longer targeting people who have an affinity for North Carolina but have never visited and have never had those first that last experiences. We're going back now to those people who have visited, who know North Carolina well, who are tried and true that all really tapped into research. And I think it's really important for us to be authentic. I love that really it's been millennials and Gen Z who have forced us as an industry to be much more authentic because now that everything is online, they can fact check. And I think Gen Zs have been really relevant and making sure that what we put out there that we live up to that brand and that brand promise.
Adam: [00:16:22] I think that's a great point. And you mentioned something that I think it's really interesting that I want to dive back into a little bit later in the discussion today, and that's how the audience has changed and how that should affect our marketing and so we'll dive back into that, but I'd like to give Ali and Matt also a chance to kind of talk about authenticity and why it's important for their destinations. Matt, we’ll start with you.
Matt: [00:16:45] Absolutely I think Allison had said it earlier as well. Where you kind of talk about the COVID fatigue and I think that's a very real thing right now. Authenticity is always important, but we've had months and months of being talked at, being told what to do. And if we agree with everything, it is exhausting living under the circumstances that been living under. And so what we're trying to look at, just again, how can we talk a little bit about later on we kind of mentioned areas where maybe things we didn't really like that we're seeing out there and I feel like it's those inauthentic connections where brands you’re trying to were here for you in a way, when it's like, “Are you really?” We think that Idaho can really provide that outdoor experience, you know, travel. This industry. Provide something that is so helpful and so vital to our mental health and to where we all kind of find ourselves right now as we're navigating everything that we’re going through.
So it is, just being and I think for us, we have worked very hard as a team and with partners to just make sure that we're speaking from the heart and that we're acknowledging the challenge that everyone faces. And how can we, in a really true, honest way, convey a message that is helpful, that is inspirational and that provides positive in people's lives that they dream about travel or actually book their trips now. As we come out of summer, we had quite a bit of visitation, which was very, very good. The audience is changing, but what's old is new again and return visitors are our big for us as well. People who kind of have that nostalgia that had that wonderful experience before, welcoming them back again.
But again, doing it as much as we can in a healthy and safe way so that people understand that we really do care and that we really do want you and your family and those around you to be healthy and safe. And we hope that that includes time visiting us.
Adam: [00:19:01] Great. Thanks, Matt. I mentioned mistakes. We're going to talk about a couple of mistakes because I think it's important to understand not only what you need to do, but I also want to be careful not to do. And authenticity provides an avenue to make sure that you're limiting those mistakes. Ali?
Ali: [00:19:19] Yeah, I'm worried my connections a little unstable to but I'll jump in really quick. I think the one thing that both of my panel friends touched on is really the trust factor. So this is such an emotional time, all of this journey, everyone's personal journey through the pandemic that you're looking for people to tell you it's okay and what is safe and what isn't safe and they’re leaning on their digital community more than ever before. And if we put out an authentic message like Allison said, they'll find out.
So we want to continue to build that trust. I know what this panel is not about is we have the pandemic, but then we have the racial injustice and the protests and as a predominantly liberal city, I am sure my friends around the nation are feeling it as well that now is the time to make sure that you are authentic about what your destination can offer right now. And I know safety is a big thing from the pandemic and from street safety also.
So I think leaning on your digital community, making sure that you have a human responding to questions and not a bot, whether it be from through email or social, and just being out there with the truth right now. Quite frankly, I think it's the most important.
Adam: [00:20:39] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I would say your message that has resonated with your audience for so long, that audience may no longer be coming at this point in time for a lot of destinations. So how can your message with a new audience be authentic and what do you have to do to figure out if your message is authentic for this new audience? And I'd like for anybody that has a thought to jump in on that one.
Ali: [00:21:05] Your social community will tell you very quickly. I think pay attention to where people are talking and where people are talking about you. If you do not have a social media agency or someone moderating and monitoring your social channels, invest in that. If you can invest in one thing right now, it would be that because that is how brands can die overnight.
Allison: [00:21:26] Yeah, I would throw in and say that at the heart of everything that we're doing and as we move forward is research. We have invested in more research at Visit North Carolina this year than we have in many years. I mean, we're looking at national traveler sentiment. We're doing residents sentiment surveys every six weeks. We’re really wanting to know more about how our community even feels about welcoming visitors back into our destination, so that's very important. And to Ali’s point as well. We're investing in research that's doing significant social listening around this topic, as well as around bias and systemic racism and inclusivity. We want to make sure that Visit North Carolina is seen as a welcoming destination and state, so research has been at the heart of everything and how we move forward.
Adam: [00:22:22] I think I'm still having some technical difficulties here. But Allison, a follow-up for you, is, is whenever we talk about something like research, I'd like to get into the specific tactics that you're using so that people know where to go from here. So what specific tactics are you guys using at North Carolina to identify those audience changes and responses to your messaging and that type of thing?
Allison: [00:22:44] Well, again, it's definitely those resident’s sentiment surveys. We are really digging into improving our database and improving work across all of our platforms because we know that when we're out there with our inspire campaign, it's going to be much more tactical. We're going to be talking to people who know us, and we want to make sure that that message as Ali and Matt talked about, is really authentic and on point, and we know that travelers want more tried and true. North Carolina has the coast, beautiful coast. It has the mountains, and it has the Piedmont, which is more urban areas. And as a state, we have to serve all of those areas and make sure that we're doing everything we can to amplify their message. So for us, it's social listening is a tactic. And then just getting all of our owned assets really where they need to be.
Adam: [00:23:41] Got it. Okay, Matt, go ahead.
Matt: [00:23:44] Well, I was just going to say, I think from our end, it's just testing and measuring. I mean, I couldn't agree more that you will absolutely hear about this from a social media perspective. And there are a number of wonderful research tools out there. But we're just very cognizant of testing and measuring and making sure that we are optimizing to what is performing. I think it's all of us are going to be facing. Budget constraints, all of us are going to be facing being able to justify how efficient and effective, our messages, our campaigns are. In the same way that we need to make sure that we're putting out the most authentic, effective message. We also need to be running campaigns that are driving results and so you can absolutely -- You're certainly going to hear about it from a social media perspective. But before just the ability to test and measure that make sure that we are optimizing to only what is working and that we are all over it as we go as important now as ever.
Adam: [00:24:44] Matt as a follow-up question there on your testing. Do you use your digital channels as a testing ground for messaging before you launch it globally?
Matt: [00:24:55] Yeah, a lot of times we will. We use a lot of our countries, our own channels, as we're putting out these different messaging. They're really kind of helps us understand what are people responding to where can we get some of those kernels of insights that we can create into a broader campaign so we can put the campaign behind it and really amplify.
Adam; [00:25:20] Got it. Thank you. Well, with this changing audience. You know, Matt, you and I had an interesting conversation as a lead-up to this discussion about the idea that some destinations literally have a generation of visitors that are their core target persona. But the pandemic has limited the ability for those core travelers to be able to travel. And so suddenly they find themselves needing to go down at least one generation to market to a younger generation of travelers that feel more comfortable traveling. How do you do that when you've been authentic? And I had a conversation with Tupelo, Mississippi. It's the birthplace of Elvis and dealt with this exact problem that Elvis fans are getting older, and they're having a hard time educating the younger audience about the cultural impact that Elvis had on the population, right?
So how do you take that messaging that core message that you have and go down a generation or two? And how do you keep them after the pandemic without alienating the audience that's been so pivotal for you until then?
Matt: [00:26:30] it’s funny you say that because I think that we've almost use may be going too young and we kind of need to go a little bit older in the last little bit. I mean, we've really focused our efforts on family, family travel and but recognizing that we have a lot of travelers who are retirees and falling into a little older demographic there, and these were fantastic travelers. They're hopping in their RVs. They're spending weeks touring around and we probably haven't messaged them as directly or aggressively as perhaps we could have. I think there are ways that you can expand your core message that again is authentic and that welcomes the new audience. And so, for us again, where we've spent so much time in that family travel space we’ve really talked about, this is multi-generational family travel. This isn’t just mom and Dad and daughter and son. This is Grandma and Grandpa. This maybe aunts and uncles. And I think we can also talk about the family looks very different and family looks different for everyone. And so it may not be Mom and Dad and father and son. It may be your best friend or your neighbor and that's your family. And, bringing those experiences, experiencing travel together.
And so, I don't know that there I wish I had a really great piece of advice to share. I think it's just kind of looking back at your core and what really does work for you. And how can we think about it differently in a way that again it has to remain authentic? But you can still use that core message.
Adam: [00:28:21] Great. Ali, how about you? If you're trying to target a generation that hasn't been part of your core audience before, how do you go about making that adjustment?
Ali: [00:28:29] Well, for us, it isn't about generation because I feel like we have had different messaging out there for them before. For us, it's our audience has changed in that we've never promoted locally before, right? We've never promoted within our county before and because of Cares Funding, which I know a lot of you are nodding your heads and I'm sure a lot of people at home are doing the same. There are different restrictions and the money comes from different places and you have new stakeholders. And so for us, it was just expanding who you're talking to and for us luckily just like Matt and Allison, the fact that we have nature and urban as we know rural and nature are getting all the love right now, people are afraid of cities. So the fact that we do get to expand to include Snoqualmie Falls, for example, the most beautiful waterfall in Washington things like that in our typical campaign, it might have popped up every once in a while. But this we get to make a concerted effort to you, go to Snoqualmie Falls, and then you get to experience all of these things in Snoqualmie as well.
So I think it's good for all of us. It keeps us on our toes. It's all news like I feel like I went back to school a little bit on where I live. When it's your home, you feel like you know what best. And then you get a new challenge and the new assignment, and it makes you dig a little bit deeper. But it's been, I think it's been fun that we have these new challenges. It's a silver lining, and again we get to introduce what we do and what we all think we do pretty well to an audience that we basically just assume they don't need to hear about us except to know that we're bringing business to their neighborhoods. So that doesn't really answer your question. Kind of like a repeat [Inaudible 00:30:07] But I was able to, like, sneak in my talking points
Adam: [00:30:10] Well, you know what, though? You spurred another question for me, which I want to pose to Allison as well. And you could choose to answer this with the previous one Allison. But when we’re messaging local stakeholders, when we haven't really done that before, what is a way to approach that? Because most of our messaging has been centered get outside money in as opposed to focusing on those locals.
Allison: [00:30:32] Well, if you want me to jump in, I think is, what do you think about where you live, work and play, right? Matt, Ali, myself, we love where we live. We love the destinations that we get to promote, we have a great passion for it, and I think you have to tap into that passion for why people choose to live, work and play somewhere, and you tap into that and you help amplify. And I do believe that some of the silver linings of this pandemic has really pulled us closer to our stakeholders. I believe that they know more of the value of what we bring to the table than they did before this pandemic hit. And we have been talking about advocacy for how many years now and I do think that this has been a level playing field in terms that the Legislature they're turning to us and they're tapping into the assets that we have and even our communication outlets to get the message out to residents and locals. So, I do see some of this as honestly a silver lining.
The other thing that I wanted to share on the previous question just really, really quickly is something that I've been spending a lot of time with and it has to do really with what has happened since May with the death of George Floyd and how things have just really changed. So not only do we have the pandemic, but we have to really look at ourselves in the mirror. And as marketers, we know we have a limited budget, and we know that we target those funds to the right people who are most likely to convert. But you do have to take a step back and say, “Are we doing this right?” And is our message right? And who are we excluding in this whole conversation?
And I know that there was one question about brands not endemic to travel who are doing it right. And for me, it wasn't even really about the pandemic. It was about Proctor & Gamble and how they've been at it for a number of years of really talking about how we need to have a conversation and the silent majority needs to speak up. But I think in our own industry, we have to really look inward and deeper. You go back and look at those flashback, throwback Thursday, flashback Friday, you will learn a lot. It’s through those photos and how we have been positioning our destinations and I think our audiences really do need to change on many levels. Sorry, I think that sounded a little preachy. I apologize.
Adam: [00:33:15] No, no, you bring up another interesting point which segues into I think another important question and that's why is now a great time to take a step back 30,000 ft view and reevaluate everything in your marketing? And why is this a good opportunity to do it? And maybe I'll throw that to Ali, you’re on mute. I'm wondering if that's because you've got a response to that? Go ahead.
Ali: [00:33:42] if not now, when? Right? We should. I was a participant in our state tourism summit yesterday and it says there was a question like, do you think this will be a paradigm shift? And if it's not, shame on us, right? This is the time. This is when people are more connected again to their digital community. This is when we can make a change. I'm grateful for the Black Travel Alliance that is holding us accountable that is making those benchmarks for people that there's no shame. But it's admitting, like, here's where I am right now and here's where we should be, at least from a racial equity perspective. But I think from a safety perspective as well it’s changed how we put information out there. No one wants to just go to an FAQ page again. That just seems so impersonal, especially right now, when we're just craving personal connection and leaning on that. So I think shame on us if we don't.
Adam: [00:34:37] Great point.
Allison: [00:34:38] I think also it's an opportunity, a lot of times we get especially from a state, you get very beholden, right? Your stakeholders and it's like, “Well, they don't want to give up that print ad,” or they don't want to give up X, Y or Z. But you know as a marketer that you need to maybe be on another platform and I think it does allow us to have those conversations to as a writer, would say, “Kill the little darlings,” right? The things that you know oh, we've got to hang onto this. But really, it's not important. It's not effective. It doesn't serve us anymore and now is the time. So yes, If not now, when? And I think this is when most of our stakeholders in the industry will allow us to explore that.
Adam: [00:35:23] Yeah, Matt, anything to add?
Matt: [00:35:25] I totally agree. I mean, if not now, when? And I think that we’re dealing with some very real challenges here. We're dealing with life-altering with real pain and real difficult and real challenge out there. And I think that as Allison had said I know it’s been an opportunity for us to really reconnect with stakeholders because we have a real opportunity to affect businesses, communities and individuals with what it is that we do as tourism marketers. I think that we can see that we're having this effect a positive effect on our communities on our businesses when we do this right. I couldn't say it better. If not now, when? There are real challenges out there that need to be addressed, and we have a real opportunity and platform to be a positive contributor to that. So if we're not going to do it now, then we are missing the boat. We need to help our communities and our residents and our stakeholders.
Adam: [00:36:26] Yeah. We had the opportunity, Laredo, Texas, came to us recently and needed some help with a rebrand, and we had the opportunity to take a look at where they had been, take a step back and reevaluate where they need to go. They are a border town. So they deal with a lot of the struggle of what comes along with a border town, questions about safety, but also some of the unrest between certain immigration policies and things like that. And so we really had to look at it as bigger than just rebranding a community. But maybe leading out on having Laredo actually have the opportunity to lead out on some necessary change.
And so this is the old stuff from Laredo that they were doing before. We felt like it looked kind of like more cowboy Texas. If you're going to put a feel to it and when you go to Laredo, that is not at all what the feel is. And so what we did is we decided to take a look at Laredo, and they really are an authentic Mexican experience in the borders of the United States. And so we went with this new campaign and it was we used this, excuse me, I said new campaign. I mean new brand. We use the aloe plant because of the representation of healing that aloe has. And we felt like the unity between the two communities on each side of the border in Laredo, Texas, could be a great example of some of the healing that needs to take place across the country. And it was a great opportunity for us to take a step back, re-evaluate everything and do something bigger than just change a logo.
And, I think every destination right now has the opportunity to do that. Take a step back and look at what you're doing as a destination. And how can you just see if you're really authentic as far as what it needs to be? And so anyway, I wanted to show that as an example, and I thought that it would be interesting for us from here to talk about maybe what is the process of re-evaluating everything? I mean, most of us have digital ads running. We have PR going. We've got traditional media running. How do you -- I mean, that is not an easy test to reevaluate what messages on every platform and not only relaunch but make sure it all works together effectively.
Allison: [00:38:49] I guess I can jump in. For us, we are again. It goes back to a lot of research, a lot of data, a lot of insights. In fact, working within Entrada to develop a dashboard so we could see things in real-time where you look really careful when we're planning media, we want to make sure that we can get in or out based on the pandemic. We don’t know if we're going to get shut down again. So what we are going to put out there obviously we need to be able to get out. We're listening. We're putting messages. And when we really launched that bridge-inspired campaign, we're going to be really targeting those people and utilizing a lot of technologies that will tell us if there really bold travelers and on the go North Carolinians, when we're putting that message out there.
Adam: [00:39:38] Great. Thank you., Ali and Matt, anything to add there?
Matt: [00:39:42] I think it comes down to prioritizing. It’s big, it’s a lot of channels. There's a lot of creative. There's a lot of audiences. A lot of priorities. And so I think where again as Allison said we're using research as much as we’re able to use data to just make sure we're prioritizing the highest impact areas first and working diligently through it. It's always been a moving target. But my God, this year has been the definition of a moving target in the ground, just continually shifting under our feet. So I feel like we're pretty maybe well-practiced, well-tuned into being able to adjust and shift when we're kind of re-establishing those priorities and working through it.
But again, it kind of comes back to the previous point too. We're going to have budget challenges. We talked about we had CARES Funds. We have these different stipulations in how we've been able to fund our programs and that has caused a lot of this reworking and so as you’re working through all of that, being mindful of those other stipulations, as we prioritize what's most important.
Ali: [00:41:02] Yeah, all of that. Nothing new to add.
Adam: [00:41:06] Great. Awesome. Well, I wanted to touch on -- I think Allison and Matt, and Ali at different times have talked about the importance of listening, whether it's to research or social media or interviews or whatever it is that you're doing, the idea of letting the audience tell you what the message should be I think that's such a valuable point. One that's so basic to marketers and yet gets overlooked so often and about re-evaluating everything. Just going back, it's really interesting because what's always worked and Allison you touched on it with Killing the little darlings, right? Like, oh, we do it because we've always done it this way, right? And COVID and I want to touch on this because I think it's important for us to talk about. There is an opportunity for every single destination to move as a result of this pandemic because the way you've always done it will not work anymore. And so now how do we make sure that the messages that we launch doesn't just look like every single other message out there and yet is the right message for our new audience and really matches up with what we need to do to have success in our roles?
Ali: [00:42:25] Don't use dramatic piano music with a deep baritone voice-over. I mean, I think that's the easy one. I think there is that -- I think I'm sure if someone who's having a drinking game with the word authentic today they would be quite tipsy by this time. But I think it really is leaning on your core standards, right? What makes you different? I think those things have been challenged a lot. We pride ourselves on being very welcoming to all. I think again, as a predominantly liberal big city, people are questioning that right now. So how can we use our community to help support that? Because people trust people like them more than they trust professionals like us. They get paid to promote a destination. And so just a quick jump back when we had the big protests in Seattle and Fox News was promoting, like Seattle's on fire with machine guns in the streets. We posted a real-time moment for us and what it really looked like. And then we let our communities support it. We let the locals, we let the people that were on the ground kind of come to our aid and fight that battle for us. - And so I think part of it is just allowing the conversation not only for those that want to learn about your destination but for people like for our locals and residents to get to promote their destination to be part of it and be deputized that way. That's something that's worked for us, especially during this time, and I look forward to leaning on that even more.
Allison: [00:43:48] And for us, what we've done with Visit and See, we're really tapping into those brands that have an affinity to North Carolina. A lot of those local influencers to get out there and help share our message. When we were shut down, we worked with local chefs and I think everyone you know, destinations because it's really those chefs that can really talk about our culture in a real, relevant way where you can taste it and feel it and see it. We worked with local chefs.
Another thing that's really endemic to North Carolina is NASCAR. It's racing. And so we've partnered with Richard Petty Motorsports and we have the king. We've sent him in and he's out there, helping share our message in a very authentic way. Take a drink. And then we're also working with some brands and Energy Drinks and Camping World and Ganda RV to really push out how beautiful North Carolina is and it is the right place, whether it's the mountains or the coast to really have those incredible outdoor experiences.
So we're really tapping into a lot of brands to help us get you know that message out there and to share our story.
Adam: [00:45:06] Great, great. Matt, anything to add there before we go with the final takeaways?
Matt: [00:45:11] That's all. Really. Idaho has been one of the fastest growing like Utah. I mean it’s just [Inaudible 00:45:18] per capita, some of the fastest growing areas. So when we've been able to kind of tap in to the new residents, well, long time ago and have a tremendous amount of pride in their state, and we've got a lot of folks that we're all thinking about rediscovering their new backyard and integrating the Northwest and so ways that we could leverage those folks, welcome them and is there then sharing their stories about their new adventures and their family [00:45:47] to be able to kind of reframe some of the images of our state for the new residents and folks that we [Inaudible 00:45:55].
Adam: [00:45:57] Great. Well, thank you guys so much. This has been wonderful. I would like to have each of you give us a short two sentence, most important piece of advice you could give somebody approaching messaging for a recovery campaign right now. We’ll go Ali, Matt and Allison.
Ali: [00:46:14] The most important advice. Trust your gut and listen to your locals and residents about when they're ready for recovery. That's the other piece. Our friends at Longwood's released a report saying only 4 out of 10 residents are ready to welcome visitors in. So be careful. Wait for it, because if Mom tells you not to have a party and you have a party, you lose that trust. So be really cautious, and that's more than two sentences, so I'll pass it on.
Adam: [00:46:43] Great. Thank you.
Matt: [00:46:45] Yeah, I would just say be ready to change. Just be ready to be nimble and no sacred cows. What you thought may work a month ago, be ready to change. There's hang the email at the door and be ready to change and work with all your partners because if there's anything that concept right now, you could be able to be nimble and be ready to change that [Inaudible 00:47:11].
Adam: [00:47:13] Great. Allison?
Allison: [00:47:14] Oh, gosh. I think for me I would leave it with look deeper. I mean, look really, really deep at how you’re marketing and promoting and targeting. I think there's so much that we will leave on the table if we don't do that. And there's an opportunity for us to connect and engage on a really meaningful level with people that have never been in our target audience before, but deserve to hear from us and deserve to have that rich experience that travel provides.
Adam: [00:47:53] Great, great. And I guess I'll close with what I feel like is my most important piece of advice to give anybody working on a recovery campaign, that would be if there was ever a time to take a risk and do something that you've never done before, now is the time because numbers are down measurement is out the window and a loss might even be difficult to measure. But a win by taking a risk will show very clear results. And so if there was ever a time to take a risk with your creative, I would say that time is now.
Allison: [00:48:24] Bravo.
Adam: [00:48:25] Thanks everybody for your time. I love this discussion today. I wish we had two hours. I could talk about this with you guys forever. So thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us today.
[00:48:41] Today's episode is brought to you by relic. As many of you know, I own an advertising agency called Relic, and we work specifically with tourism destinations. If there's any of you that are struggling with what to do next or you tried agencies that don't specialize in tourism or if you've been using a local flavor for years and years and you're just looking for something new, I would say give us a call. Give us the opportunity to take a look at your plan, see what you're doing, use our tourism knowledge and industry specialty to examine everything from your brand, to your tactical execution, and make recommendations of how to help. We'll do that assessment for free. We'll give you those recommendations for free. And if you like what we say, maybe you can hire us to execute on those plans. So kind of a risk free opportunity to have us. Take a holistic look at everything you're doing. Provide some recommendations and you kind of see us in action. If you're interested in having us do something like that, please send me an email directly at adam@relicagency.com, I would love to set that up with my team.
[End of Transcript]
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