Visit Idaho “Beyond Words” Campaign
SITUATION
Visit Idaho set out to reach audiences at every stage of their planning journey and inspire them to successfully book their trip to Idaho. By the numbers, we hoped to increase tax revenue and maximize economic impact with a lodging growth goal of 10% in 2022. More booked trips leads to increased bed tax collections for Visit Idaho, which ultimately brings economic growth to the state.
STRATEGY
Our goal was to create a multiyear campaign for Visit Idaho that was deeply versatile at its core, transforming to suit their target travelers, vast adventures, all four seasons, and the diverse geography across the entire state. We wanted to cut through the noise of advertising to reach consumers as they began to plan their trips, and educate them about the opportunity for adventure found throughout Idaho. This was “Beyond Words.”
We created this campaign to highlight the multisensory experience of travel in Idaho. Visit Idaho identified that the most impactful moments within a journey are often reflected in the emotional reactions and personal associations that travelers come to develop with a destination. By demonstrating a balance between those intimate moments in a trip and the grand, often indescribable views of natural Idaho, the campaign creative shows the audience that Idaho is “Beyond Words” for many reasons. In the process of emphasizing what is inherently indescribable, the interpretation of Beyond Words becomes diversified and distinctive to each individual and their experiences across the state.
Beyond Words showcases Idaho with tight action shots and breathtaking macro shots that bring to life the vision of this campaign across all digital platforms. In planning and execution for messaging, the five senses play a major role. By focusing on the taste of a locally brewed beer on a summer afternoon, the feeling of diving into the brisk water of a mountain lake, or the smell of the campfire reaching your nose as you wind down your day, the result prompts a desire to slow down and reconnect with authentic moments in travel that you can only experience in Idaho. This evergreen campaign intends to inspire families, outdoor enthusiasts, road-trippers and travel buffs to view the visitidaho.org website and book their vacation.
RESULTS
Visit Idaho strategically met consumers at various stages of planning to achieve our goal of driving new audiences to Idaho by expanding our advertising into new markets outside of our typical road-tripping drive range. Additionally, we extended this campaign’s potential audience for fall by translating the fall landing page, four Travel Tip stories, animated ads and videos for our Spanish-speaking audience.
We saw year-over-year performance wins including:
Google Search: 16.44% increase in CTR and 41.82% increase in engagement conversion rate
Google Display: 52.9% increase in conversion rate, 114.3% increase in average session duration and 9.8% decrease in bounce rate
Google YouTube: 89% increase in View Rate from YouTube’s average and 186% increase from our 2021 video
Meta: Our 15-second video had a 14% higher average play time, and our 30-second video had a 50% higher average play time from 2021.
