The Orlando/Orange County Convention Visitors Bureau (Orlando/Orange County CVB) will continue this fall with a domestic and international marketing campaign titled “Orlando Makes Me Smile,” hoping that the old Louis Armstrong song was right and “the whole world smiles with them.”
“The campaign’s creative approach has resonated extremely well with consumers and has provided us with a campaign platform we are very excited to move forward with,” said Gary C. Sain, president and CEO of the Orlando/Orange County CVB. “Our spring ad tracking studies showed domestic intent to visit Orlando in the next 12 months was 14 percentage points higher among those target consumers who recognized our smile advertising than those who didn’t.”
One branch of the campaign focuses on domestic leisure as it tries to expand consumer knowledge of vacation destinations with promotional deals. The “Free-for-Fall” program launched last week offers a variety of “Get One Free” deals targeted to appeal to a wide audience, including: families with small children, couples, girlfriend getaways, seniors, and foodies. Although the campaign primarily reaches the Southeast through radio, print, and online advertising, the Orlando/Orange County CVB will also “Blitz” Miami and Atlanta in September with a week of television and radio appearances and travel trade activity.
In the realm of e-marketing, Orlando is launching the “67 Days of Smiles” social media campaign. Beginning August 27, 2009, New York City’s Kyle Post and Stacey Doornbos will visit more than 100 attractions in 67 days while sharing their adventures via Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Chosen from hundreds of entries from dozens of countries, the duo will take on the task of chronicling the art, entertainment, culture, sports, and travel in Orlando.
For international markets, the “Smile” campaign has several promotions beginning this fall, and continuing into the winter/spring of 2010. The U.K. campaign starts in early September with advertisements and deals, and efforts in Canada begin soon thereafter in November. Globally, a fall television and print advertising campaign is underway in Brazil and travel trade marketing in Mexico and Germany will begin in 2010. In addition, the largest international travel trade show in the U.S., known as “Pow Wow 2010,” is scheduled to take place in Orlando, where it will showcase its “Smile” messaging for 5,000 show attendees from around the world.
As a part of its campaign, Orlando is also ramping up efforts to market itself as a business meeting and convention destination. A new meetings website, OrlandoMeeting.com, was recently created with an online toolkit for planners and a search engine for venues. In addition, the “C-Suite campaign” launches this fall with face-to-face meetings scheduled with CEOs, EFOs, and COOs as Orlando works to convince executives that it is a serious destination for business meetings. A “Medical Advisory Board” has also been formed to research and enhance their convention experiences of attendees to Medical Conventions, which have become an important niche market in Orlando.
To facilitate communication and convey market needs to prospective convention clients, “Operation Connect” was started this year to put community leaders in touch with potential new meeting prospects. Its current goal is to reach a threshold of 1,000 meeting planners within its network.
If you are interested in finding out more about the “Smile” Campaign and the Orlando/Orange County Convention Visitors Bureau, please visit: www.orlandoinfo.com/media