Arizona Office of Tourism
The Arizona Office of Tourism’s (AOT) purpose is to inspire leisure travel to and throughout the state of Arizona. AOT is the government agency in charge of marketing tourism for the state of Arizona. This is accomplished by expanding travel activity and increasing related revenues through tourism promotion and development.
Why did they come to Off Madison Ave?
After years of advertising in the same key cities of Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco, the Arizona Office of Tourism looked to expand its marketing efforts further east. We set our sights on one of the most competitive and saturated markets in the country: New York City.
The challenge was to break into a new target market and make an immediate impact. Our goal was to encourage conversation about Arizona and inspire travel to Arizona from the Big Apple. Our research on the New York market provided the framework with WHERE and WHEN to reach travelers in the city, but we needed a creative strategy and message that would cut through, making even the busiest New Yorkers stop in their tracks.
How did Off Madison Ave tackle their challenge?
Our approach was to tap into the motivations people already have for travel and shift their behavior so that Arizona became a top consideration. We tapped into the audience’s motivations for travel through an innovative brand activation with Saks Fifth Avenue’s flagship store. To inspire the Saks Fifth Avenue visual and fashion teams, we needed something bolder than the usual scenic photography. We opted for series of artful posters we’d created to honor the Grand Canyon and nine other Arizona national parks and monuments. The Saks Fifth Avenue team was blown away and designed the entire activation around the poster graphics, which included:
6 street-level window displays
2 interior displays
Social media support
An email to over 2.5 million Saks Fifth Avenue shoppers
The activation was further supported through a behavior-based targeted media buy.
The visuals were striking, urging shoppers to GO WEST. One customer even noted, “The landscapes made some of the most beautiful windows I’ve ever seen at Saks. ”New Yorkers spoke, and the Arizona Office of Tourism listened. We featured the impactful artwork in nearly every other media channel for this campaign, including:
Double-decker bus wraps
Billboards
Solar Recycling Kiosks
Digital Newsstands
Social Media Posts
To reinforce that feeling—and personalize the campaign—we made the artwork available to keep as postcards, t-shirts, coloring books and posters.
To evaluate the success of the campaign, we monitored overall impressions to gauge the level of awareness, engagement on social to understand the kinds of conversations and behaviors our outreach was generating, the number of actual visitors from New York as well as those visitors’ movements throughout the state.
What were the results?
The results of this creative marketing strategy were as breathtaking as the art. Saks Fifth Ave’s activation alone brought over 37 million impressions across in-store, digital and offline placements. The out-of-home efforts garnered nearly 79 million impressions. The response on social media was overwhelmingly positive. Instagram users generated almost 94,000 engagements and drove up demand for purchasing the art as posters and t-shirts.
But seeing the ads and talking about them wasn’t the end goal. The whole point of expanding to a new market was to drive visitation from New York to Arizona – and this campaign did exactly that. Nearly 2,000 New Yorkers visited Arizona thanks to this campaign. And more than 400 Visit Arizona app users visited the national parks featured in our creative.
But New Yorkers weren’t the only ones inspired by our art. When Arizona Governor Doug Ducey saw the images, he was inspired to replace Arizona’s official roadside welcome signs for the first time in three decades. Soon, and for years to come, drivers entering Arizona will see 16-by-16-feet versions of our campaign illustrations. That certainly qualifies as a grand entrance – just like the one we made into the New York City marketplace, thanks to a smart media strategy and one-of-a-kind artwork.”
Learn more about Off Madison Ave
Great creative is the simplest distillation of a human truth. And that balance of emotion and logic is at the heart of our creative work. It’s the reason why brands turn to us to create memorable and behavior changing campaigns. See how we approach creative for our clients.
