Sunshine Matters

This summer, in correlation with our seasonal campaign, VISIT FLORIDA expanded our efforts to include visitors’ beloved dogs.  #DogsLoveFL was a fully integrated campaign designed to create a fresh way to highlight summer travel in Florida, including the creation of social conversations that allowed our Partners to showcase their product.

As an integrated campaign with the efforts of multiple departments, VISIT FLORIDA partnered with “LIVE with Kelly and Michael” to host a national contest, placed a targeted Google/YouTube buy focused on summer drive visitors who love their pets, developed a tail-wagging new landing page, created a series of “Dogs Do Florida” videos, and encouraged Florida advocates and dog owners to share why #DogsLoveFL on social media.

The VISIT FLORIDA Public Relations team partnered with the No. 1 daytime talk show, “LIVE with Kelly and Michael,” to create a brand integration that included a national contest, “Florida Pet Pix Photo Contest.”  The winner won a trip to Florida valued at $10,000.  The contest ran on the show for a week with on-air brand spots and promotion on the show’s social media platforms and received an impressive 10,358 submissions.  This week-long partnership garnered more than 22 million gross impressions, which included on-air announcements and host mentions.  The campaign also made an impression on the show’s 2.7 million social followers.  Furthermore, the PR team announced the campaign through a press release that linked to all the campaign elements, picking up 8 million in-state earned media impressions.  The participation by Partners enhanced the campaign as they promoted the hashtag and shared their own dog-friendly content.

In addition, VISIT FLORIDA developed the Dogs Love Florida landing page on VISITFLORIDA.com to showcase our Partners across the state and provide pet-owners with content and information to plan the perfect Florida vacation with their furry friends.  With “Water” (dog-friendly beaches) as the most popular topic, other content includes dog-friendly hotels, parks, events and restaurants.  Dogs Love Florida received more than 10,000 visitors and more than 12,800 page views during the month-long campaign.

Also featured on the Dogs Love Florida landing page is a link to the “Dogs Do Florida Videos” on YouTube.  This series of six videos, which generated more than 3.4 million views in one month, used “doggie cams” to capture a dog’s point of view as they explored dog-friendly destinations and attractions around Florida.  For example, the most popular of the videos, “A Dog’s View of St. Augustine, Florida: This Walk Is Historic,” is hosted by Ziggy the Golden Retriever who discovers St. Augustine by interacting with the locals, digging at the archaeological exhibit, drinking from the Fountain of Pooch, riding through town in a horse-drawn carriage, going on a boat ride down the Matanzas River, and playing on the beach.  In one month, this video alone garnered more than 2.7 million views with 1.6 million minutes watched.

Finally, VISIT FLORIDA and Share A Little Sunshine generated social engagement around the campaign through #DogsLoveFL, an extension of our popular hashtag, #LoveFL.  By utilizing in-state influencer efforts, ongoing Share A Little Sunshine content and paid media throughout the campaign, #DogsLoveFL garnered more than 4,200 mentions and 13.4 million paid and organic impressions.  We hosted a “Travel Chat” on Twitter about pet-friendly Florida with 312 participants, 1,100 mentions and a 2.5 million reach.  VISIT FLORIDA also partnered with Barkbox to increase engagement.

See some of the following examples of Dogs Love Florida coverage: Huffington Post, Dunedin Patch, Suncoast News, Pensacola News Journal, and AP Correspondent Tweet.