It helps to have a city that’s easy to love, but the striking campaign earned neworleansonline.com 611 million views in its debut year – three times more than the year prior – and helped attract 9.28 million visitors to the city along with $6.47 billion in tourist spending.
In the years since Katrina, New Orleans has risen up again to what Forbes is calling the “#1 fastest growing city in the country,” and “one of the top 10 cities in the United States.” Good news for a destination whose goal is to rake in 13.7 million visitors in 2018, while creating 33,000 new jobs. At the rate they’re going, it certainly wouldn’t come as a surprise.
NOTMC’s Marketing Manager Hartley Wasser shared with
NewsCred the strategy behind the successful, botswana telemarketing database resonant campaign, and what the city has planned for 2015.
You’re coming up on the third year of the fabulous “Follow Your NOLA” campaign – what were some challenges and goals you had starting out?
In terms of cities that have a large tourism industry, our budget for advertising isn’t as large as places like New York, Vegas, or even Charleston. So the challenge was, if we wanted to continue to grow tourism here, how do we do that with the money that we have? How do you create brand ambassadors and get people talking about you?
[New York-based digital marketing agency] 360i came up with #FollowYourNOLA as this hashtag and call to action that locals and visitors could adopt to help spread the word and become brand ambassadors. One of the goals was to create this mantra for New Orleans, similar to what I ♥ New York has done for NYC.
Can you share any major lessons or key takeaways that you’ve learned while working with 360i?
Our ads used to be very specific to the French Quarter. We were always showing this idea of what we thought a tourist wanted to see – people anticipating second-line [parades], eating shrimp étouffée…stereotypes, really. 360i basically told us, Look, people know that Bourbon Street is there. You’re not going to grow visitation and visitor spending and get different types of visitors in by just showing them the same thing that they already know exists. You’ve got this rich, beautiful city, and when locals talk about it, they’re talking about qualities that are actually really attractive to the types of visitors we want to come. So, show them. Get people out of the French Quarter, highlight the different neighborhoods. Talk to them like you’d talk to a friend who’s coming to town. Paint a truer picture of New Orleans and people will come to see that.
In turn, we’ve been able to strengthen our content and tell the story of our city in a much more authentic way by tapping into what’s there and allowing that to shine through without feeling like we have to create these scenarios, or show a certain side of things. You can look at our Instagram or our different blog posts and feel like those are experiences you could have if you came here. It’s what’s made our work standout and come off as very natural, approachable and inspiring to our visitors.
You’ve honed in on a focused targeted demographic
– the exploration-hungry traveler. How has that helped steer your content creation?
The experiential discoverer is the kind of person who wants suggestions as far as where to go, landmarks, can’t-miss-attractions, parks, areas. They’re interested in seeing all that, but then going beyond. They’ll go to a place like Carmo, because they heard there’s this amazing sandwich called the Rico, and then they’ll talk to people there and say, “I was thinking of seeing some live music tonight, where should I go?” They want an anchor point that lets them follow a trail of breadcrumbs in whichever direction interests them most.
The blog we’ve developed at really speaks to that audience. We’re in the process of working on a redesign for the site, but the idea there is that it’s this insider voice – a cool friend who knows the city you’re about to visit, who you’re going to e-mail and say, “Alright, where do I need to go? What do I need to see? Point me in the right direction.” It doesn’t feel like a tourism department is talking to you.
So there’s gonola.com, followyournola.com and neworleansonline.com. Where are you seeing the most user engagement?
Neworleansonline.com is a general trip-planning tool. We have itineraries on there, neighborhood guides, and information about transportation and festivals.