Sunshine Matters

VISIT FLORIDA and nineteen Industry Partners, including Florida DMOs, CVBs, attractions, restaurants and even an airline, embarked on our second Digital Innovation Forum last week in Silicon Valley and San Francisco.  For five days, the group met with key staff – including Shantanu Narayen, CEO of Adobe Systems and Gopi Kallayil, Chief Evangelist of Brand Marketing for Google – and other product, brand and business leaders from Adobe, Facebook, Google, Twitter, Airbnb and Uber.  Attendees spent the week learning how to leverage each digital company or social platform for their own digital needs, while also being privy to up and coming products, trends and insights.

Each digital company discussed how data and technology are helping brands make better business decisions.  Their presentations and discussions provoked several key takeaways in which tourism entities need to shift their focus if they want to stay top of mind in the ever-changing digital world.

1) We live in an experience era in which a data explosion is occurring.  Experiences matter more than ever and the best experiences are created with content that is compelling, personal, useful and everywhere.  Data is important because it tells you how long content should be kept and how frequently it should be changed.

2) We also live in a “phygital” world where there is a convergence of a consumer’s physical and digital world.  This relationship allows brands to make themselves more tangible to their consumers by connecting their digital presence to an immersive, real-world experience.  Video consumption and production, including live video, are very important.  By 2020, 60 percent of online traffic in the U.S. will be video.  Ads don’t need to be shorter for mobile; they can be longer and quirkier in order to be more memorable.  Explore the balance of story and brand for longer-form digital video.

3) Ads have to be relevant and need to be as good as organic content.  Given the surge in content velocity, consumers are constantly scrolling from one piece of content to the next on a variety of apps, social networks and websites.  Even the best brands are competing against photos of friend’s babies and kittens.

4) Consumers choose based on micromoments in which they want to “know”, “go”, “do” or “buy.”  As travel leaders, we need to identify which micromoments are most important to our brand’s objectives, deliver on needs in the moment and measure the moments that matter.

With so many takeaways, we are excited to implement many of these insights into our own digital strategy.  VISIT FLORIDA plans to continue this important initiative, so for more information or to attend future events, please contact Becca Smith, Digital Strategy Manager, at bsmith@VISITFLORIDA.org.