Bringing the Beach to the Streets
Summary
Not everyone can drop everything and head straight to Port Aransas—but what if Port A came to them? Our guerrilla campaign planted coastal vibes in the middle of urban life, turning sidewalks and plazas into playful reminders of the shore. The activations sparked conversation, spread across social, and gave city dwellers a reason to picture themselves on the beach. It was a campaign that felt like the community itself: easygoing, clever, and welcoming.
Client
Port Aransas
Scope
Experiential
Campaign Title
Visit Port Aransas Guerrilla Marketing Campaign
Results
1.7M
digital impressions
28M+
OOH and traditional media impressions
5K+
new website visitors
53%
increase in new website visitors from Austin
PRE-ACTIVATION
Advertisements were placed two weeks prior to the activation in Austin to build intrigue for the event.
Digital (OOH) in Domain and Domain Northside, a high-end retail and residential district in the Austin DMA that we knew Port Aransas’ target audience frequents.
Hand painted, interactive mural by a local artist to drive awareness and potentially gain earned social media placements.
Wild postings that were placed on iconic buildings in neighborhoods known for being eclectic around Austin.
Traditional media ads on Hulu, Meta, TikTok, and Snapchat based on our research which showed our target audience had a high composition rate and were over indexed on these platforms.
The week of the activation, we deployed a creative swap across the digital Out-of-Home network, social media, and Hulu. The new ads’ message specifically spoke to the details of the activation and encouraged viewers to click through to the site and find the schedule of and where the activation was occurring.
The landing page with the schedule also invited visitors to take a quiz to discover which of the six value propositions they needed from Port Aransas. Once completed, they were served a custom itinerary to further promote planning their vacation.
ACTIVATION
The “Message in a Bottle” campaign revolved around a treasure hunt throughout Austin in which participants looked to find their own “message in a bottle.” Each day’s giveaways focused on a specific theme that represented the six key value propositions of the destination: adventure, natural wonder, quality time, inspiration, serenity, and vitamin sea. Each bottle had giveaways coinciding with the day’s theme and explained how you could find it in Port Aransas.
Instead of having the Visit Port Aransas logo all over everything, we intentionally designed the bottles participants found to be beautiful items first in hopes people would want to continue using them. When we noticed multiple people coming back every day looking for the day’s value prop and entering to win the new giveaway and expressing their disbelief that they were free, we knew we had accomplished the wow factor we were looking to deliver.
One of the core elements of this guerilla marketing campaign was the “mobile beach,” which served as our activation’s home base since all activities were based around the beach. We knew the truck would draw people in and help communicate our hook, “we brought Austin’s beach to Austin, check it out to get a taste of the island life.” While the truck was incredibly eye-catching, it wasn’t just to be looked at. We encouraged visitors to hop onboard to “experience” Austin’s beach by taking pictures with the backdrop, wiggling their toes in the sand, and interacting with the sandcastle, towels, beach balls, and chairs.
We also gave away over 12,000 free items during the activation and, on a hot day in Austin, it was no surprise that the favorite giveaway was our Taste of the Island Life mocktails.
