Sunshine Matters

With the official start of summer last weekend, VISIT FLORIDA’s “Say Yes to Florida” campaign is in full swing.  As part of these efforts, we recently unveiled a host of innovative online tools that aid our target audience of millennials and young families in enjoying the Sunshine State’s fun, playful destinations.

The first feature is VISIT FLORIDA’s Florida Beach Finder that allows travelers to virtually walk hundreds of miles of Sunshine State beaches – from legendary locations to lesser-known sanctuaries.  This product is the culmination of our four-month Google Street View Trekker project that captured 360-degree images of Florida’s beaches.  Found on VISITFLORIDA.com/beachfinder, the resource allows users to tune in their preferences in four ranges of beach personalities and immediately view choices that best match their interests.

Another online feature VISIT FLORIDA recently rolled out via YouTube is Floridagrams, a social media tool that lets visitors produce and share their own vacation highlights reel.  With Floridagrams, visitors can upload their favorite Florida vacation photos to selected celebrity scripts and make their own “blockbuster” hit.

Both of these online resources are being showcased through six online takeovers where VISIT FLORIDA’s campaign is the lead advertisement on a popular website for a 24 hour period.  Multiple takeovers have already occurred on the New York Times, YouTube and Yahoo Mail log-in page, with the last Yahoo takeover happening this Saturday.  Combined, these sites garner more than 1 billion unique visitors per month.

In addition, VISIT FLORIDA’s “Beach Within Reach” sweepstakes, which is also tied to the summer campaign, begins July 1 and runs through September 1, 2014.  Participants have the opportunity to win one of four beach vacation packages to Daytona Beach Shores, Destin, Fort Lauderdale or St. Petersburg Beach.

These are just a few of the innovative ways that VISIT FLORIDA is reaching out to the millennial and young family demographics to increase visitation to the Sunshine State this summer.  To view VISIT FLORIDA’s summer landing page, click here.