Winner: Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation (GPTMC)
Campaign: SoundAboutPhilly Podcast Tours
The Mission:
Thanks to a one-year, $350,000 grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation (GPTMC) had the financial backing needed to develop
SoundAboutPhilly, a Web site that offers podcast tours of Philadelphia.
The Hook:
Targeting people who are looking for high-tech ways to tour the City of Brotherly Love, the GPTMC wanted to generate publicity around the new podcast tours and the stories they
tell about Philadelphia.
The Execution:
Launched in September 2006, SoundAboutPhilly.com included the following components:
- Audio with customizable Google maps for selected tours;
- "Mix-and-match" tour segments for visitors to customize their own tour;
- Tours directly on soundaboutphilly.com or downloaded segments on i-Tunes;
- RSS feeds to receive a new tour each time one is uploaded to the Web site; and,
- 10 three- to six-minute segments of seven tours, which run the gamut from dining in different ethnic neighborhoods to the best places for vintage fashions.
The GPTMC publicized the podcast tours by promoting it to travel media in the U.S. and Canada. A blogger relations campaign was also mounted as the story was sent to several
high-profile local, national and travel blogs, such as GoogleMapsMania.com and Gridskipper.com. The GPTMC team, which included Veronica Wentz and Caroline Bean, also announced an
iPod giveaway via an e-mail newsletter to a 95,000-person database.
Mission Accomplished:
SoundAboutPhilly scored media coverage in nearly 100 outlets in the U.S. and Canada, including the Toronto Star, Philadelphia Business Journal, the Philadelphia Inquirer,
Boston Globe online and the Washington Post.
Also, there have been more than 529 visitors to the SoundAboutPhilly.com Web site per day, as well as more than 156,000 podcast tour downloads to date. PRN