[Editor’s Note: We ask communicators to spot trends and tell us how their brands have reacted to them.]
VA Tourism Corp.
The Trend:When your time-honored brand has been around since the late ’60s, how do you ensure that it resonates with younger audiences seeking unique, new and authentic experiences? For the Virginia Tourism Corporation, home of the iconic Virginia Is for Lovers brand, we turned to the trend of personalization in our messaging. The goal was to target travelers interested in specific travel experiences.
The Reaction:Certainly we are fortunate to have a brand people recognize. Virginia Is for Lovers dates from 1969, when a copywriter at what is now the Martin Agency in Richmond, VA, created it. It predates the I Heart NY campaign from the mid-70s. It’s been inducted into the Madison Ave Advertising Walk of Fame and Forbes.com tapped it as one of the 10 best tourism-marketing campaigns of all time.
A challenge we face as communicators, however, is that while people recognize brand slogans, their knowledge may be incomplete. People don’t always connect Virginia Is for Lovers to travel. More troubling: People often don’t know what there is to do in Virginia, besides, of course, visiting Colonial Williamsburg or presidential homes (eight U.S. presidents hail from Virginia).
So, how do you reach consumers to share that Virginia also is a hub for lovers of wine, oysters, craft beer, haute cuisine, outdoor recreation, beaches, mountains and more?
We decided to shake up the perception of Virginia by leaning into personalization in our storytelling. Going back to the roots of the original Virginia Is for Lovers concept, we personalized it to Virginia Is for Lovers of Mountains, Beaches and Wine, among other things.
We then took personalization to the next level by integrating it into our brand strategy. For example, with Virginia Is for Lovers as our flagship, we created a sub-brand suite to revamp our marketing, showcasing Virginia’s vacation experiences or lures. These sub-brands are communicated across all of our channels in an earned, owned, paid and social media strategy. The aim of the lures is to differentiate Virginia, allowing us to tell the Virginia Is for Lovers story in a unique, authentic and exciting way.
We now use specific sub-brands, such as V irginia Is for Craft Beer Lovers or Virginia Is for Music Lovers across all our marketing. This allows us to communicate specific experiences that travelers are most interested in.
Let’s take wine, for example. Virginia is the birthplace of American wine. It boasts 300+ vineyards and wineries. It’s also the fifth-largest wine-producing state.
Most important for us, there are unexpected travel experiences to offer oenophiles. They can kayak on the Chesapeake Bay en route to a winery. To the west, Thomas Jefferson’s vision of winemaking inspires 30 wineries on the Monticello Wine Trail.
Still, for many travelers, Virginia probably isn’t top of mind as a destination for a vineyard vacation. To change that, we share the Virginia wine story across all our channels: earned, owned, paid and social. We created a sub-brand landing page for Virginia wine, showcasing wineries, events and festivals. On our blog, we frequently showcase content tailored to wine lovers, such as Where to Wine and Brine in Virginia’s Wine Country, highlighting places where travelers can pair Virginia oysters with Virginia wine. We feature wine content across all social platforms, from Virginia Wine Month (October) Instagram Stories to Facebook posts about Virginia wine trails to sweeping views of Virginia wineries in YouTube videos.
Getting Personal with Media
On the paid side, we’ve partnered with BuzzFeed and Huffington Post, as well as travel and lifestyle bloggers.For the BuzzFeed activation, we personalized things by inviting its writers to Virginia. The result was an article: Wine Lovers, We’ve Found Your New Paradise.
On the earned side, we stayed with personalization. We did this by appealing directly to journalists’ taste buds. Sometimes it’s a press trip or a media dinner at a Virginia winery or an out-of-state event featuring Virginia wine and food. Resulting coverage has appeared in SAVEUR, Forbes, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Town & Country and many others. It’s worked: 2.2 million visitors now experience Virginia Wine Country every year, resulting in a $1.37 billion economic impact for the Commonwealth.
Virginia Is for Wine Lovers is just one example of a Virginia Is for Lovers sub-brand. By executing our sub-brand strategy across all channels, we’ve achieved integrated marketing success, enhancing our share of voice while breathing new life into the Virginia Is for Lovers brand.
Today’s travel market is over-saturated and extremely competitive, but we’re finding new ways to attract travelers by showing them just what Virginia Is for Lovers means: personalized, historic life experiences that are unexpected, authentic and new.
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