Off-Season Content Creation
To have the right visuals and itineraries to marketing the Willamette Valley as a year-round location, content creation efforts have focused on highlighting shoulder/off season travel assets.
Shoulder Season Campaign: Cellar Season
In an effort to meet stakeholder’s requests for increased shoulder season visits to the Willamette Valley we engaged in an effort to bolster our written and visual content, and our media engagement. We created photo, video and itinerary assets, and engaged in several FAM tours to promote our shoulder season campaign: “Cellar Season."
Value of Investment
- Itinerary, content, video and photo assets: ~$13,000
- PR, FAM and story placement: $15,000
Successes & Challenges
There were many opportunities during this biennium to embrace and gather assets for our shoulder season campaign which we define as Cellar Season, a time to slow down and embrace a seasonal approach to wine tasting and touring. Here are a few examples:
- We partnered with other entities who were already using the successful theme and co-op assets together. WVVA and WVWA partnered on the branding and asset collection of Cellar Season so we could both be speaking the same language to the consumer about travel during this time. WVWA produced the branding and style guide and WVVA produced more than 150 photo assets and a video highlighting this time of year. All assets will be available to state, regional and DMO partners for ongoing marketing of the season.
- FAM and Influencer tours – WVVA welcomed two large groups of media and a handful of on-off influencers to the region in order to get a sense of the seasonal campaign we are pushing and produce engaging content to entice future visits. Overall we welcomed six bloggers, and five influencers from September 2018 to March 2019 that resulted in 15 articles/blogs as well as 60 posts on Instagram stories, and a total reach of 186,000.
Cross-Regional Marketing:Wine, Whales and Wings Road Trip
The Willamette Valley Visitors Association and Oregon Coast Visitors Association collaborated on a cross-regional marketing itinerary highlighting experiences to do in both region’s off season from birding, wine tasting during cellar season and whale watching along the Central Coast. The six-night itinerary features three nights in each region. Both RDMOs shared hosting costs of having a VisitUSA Parks brand ambassador do a FAM tour, create blogs, and a video production team who made a sizzle video about the trip.
Two routes were created for this trip, one for FIT travelers wanted to stay at smaller more boutique properties with a route using the new Mary’s Peak to Pacific Scenic Byway. The second route is a loop, with bus-friendly driving highlighting hotels that are trade friendly to reach the international traveler.
Social Results: WVVA Channel
- 34,114 reached
- 693 link clicks ($.44 per result)
- Carousel ad ran February 25-
March 31 boosted at $306
Social Results: VisitUSA Channel
VisitUSA parks posted 3 Facebook and Instagram posts, influencer in region content creation, a 2-minute feature film with 3 short clips. 10 target Facebook ads were created, in English, German, French and Chinese.
- 173,500 reach
- 44,100 engagements
- 25.4% engagement rate
Market performance:
U.S.
Drive markets performed well with most knowledge around the Oregon Coast- 32,272 reach
- 13.24% engagement
U.K.
Great reach and engagement- 21,388 reach
- 33.18% engagement
China
lots of reach, less engagement- 23,824 reach
- 15.80% engagement
Canada
Great engagement- 15,483 reach
- 19.68% engagement
Germany
Great Engagement- 26,995 reach
- 19.23% engagement
France
Great engagement with less reach- 5,772 reach
- 27.43% engagement
Moving Forward
With assets in place, this themed itinerary will be used as inspiration during the off season in the 2019-2021 biennium. We feel this route will resonate well with our target markets of Seattle, Canada and Germany. We would like to host more media with this itinerary theme, and it will be one of the Willamette Valley/Oregon Coast pre-FAM opportunities for the Go West Summit in 2020.
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