Sunshine Matters

In January, VISIT FLORIDA announced the launch of our new spring 2010 “Your Florida Side” marketing campaign, which ran through early May.  VISIT FLORIDA contracted with Strategic Marketing & Research, Inc. to conduct research quantifying the “Your Florida Side” campaign’s return on investment by assessing the level of incremental travel that it generated. 

The “Your Florida Side” campaign featured vibrant imagery that combined both familiar and unexpected Florida scenery with action verbs encouraging consumers to “embrace,” “unleash,” “awaken,” and “release” their Florida side.  The integrated campaign included extensive print advertising, broadcast and cable television, radio, online and out-of-home advertising, consumer travel shows, as well as online and mobile sweepstakes.  While it was designed to reach a national audience, a special emphasis was placed on the Sunshine State’s traditionally strong feeder markets of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C.   Examples of television and print executions, as well as a campaign brief and details on the sweepstakes promotions, can be viewed at http://www.visitflorida.com/your-florida-side.

Overall performance of a marketing campaign depends a great deal on media placement, the media utilized, the money spent, and the creative execution.   The new creative received stronger ratings than the 2009 campaign in terms of both communicating key messages and generating interest in travel to the state.

The spring 2010 campaign generated more than 180,000 Florida trips that are directly attributable to the advertising.  This resulted in more than $417 million in direct spending and generated $25 million in new tax revenue.  Overall, this equates to $147 returned for every advertising dollar invested and $9 in taxes returned for every advertising dollar invested.  The number of incremental trips generated in 2010 is nearly 25 percent higher than last year and the ROI is nearly three times higher than in 2009.

These strong results are encouraging and speak to the strength of the new advertising campaign and the economic impact that is generated by VISIT FLORIDA’s destination marketing efforts.