Project: Travel Moments

Client: Capital Region USA

Timing: 2008

Task: To position Virginia Beach as a soft adventure travel destination through brand synergies.

Implementation: We ran a competition with National Geographic magazine, in conjunction with brands associated with soft adventure including Intrepid Travel, Global Vision and the adventure clothing brand, Gore-tex.

Results: 2500 entered the competition to win a holiday to Virginia Beach and 2100 people registered their interest to receive further information about the destination.

For Virginia Beach, it was a question of geography

In 2008/9, we worked very closely with a number of brands on behalf of Virginia Beach to set up a promotion with National Geographic magazine, and on its website.  The competition ran across six issues of the magazine; a specialist publication reaching academics, society members, frequent travellers and adventure travellers of all ages.

Entrants to the competition were required to write articles about their most memorable travel ‘moments’ under a variety of headings; Mountains, Ice, On Water, On bicycle, Overland (which we chose for Virginia Beach) and Natural World.  The winner in each category won a holiday to the sponsor’s destination.

The competition received widespread media coverage and perfectly targeted Virginia Beach’s core audience with distinct product messages about the destination.  The brand association with the adventure clothing brand, Gore-Tex, with the Royal Geographic Society, and with the other sponsors such as Intrepid Travel and Global Vision also provided positive brand synergies for Virginia Beach.

We had over 2500 entries to the Overland competition and 2100 people registered their interest to receive further information about Virginia Beach.  Capital Region USA followed up these leads with an HTML email.

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