Colorado Tourism Office
The Situation
Colorado is the top-ranked U.S. winter vacation destination. While the state receives heavy media coverage for its renowned winter season, Colorado is a four-season destination, with two-thirds of its annual visitors traveling to the state outside of the winter. Colorado offers year-round recreational and adventure sports such as mountain biking, kayaking, golfing, skiing and rock climbing. The destination also boasts abundant wildlife-watching opportunities, legendary music and performing arts venues, pampering spas, distinct cuisine, wine and beer, special events and more. In order to position Colorado as an all-season destination to time-pressed media and consumers, MMG Mardiks created “Let’s Talk the Many Seasons of Colorado,” a New York experiential event. The goal was to represent all four seasons of Colorado with activities and options to showcase a diverse visitor experience.
The Strategy
This event was the largest public relations initiative in the history of the Colorado Tourism Office (CTO) and vastly different than anything the organization had attempted before. With the approval of a $250,000 budget from the CTO Board, the agency began to identify potential venues and reach out to partners across the state to secure participation. With hundreds of partners across Colorado, the agency balanced the need to represent different areas of the state with the desire to bring the most visual and interactive elements to the event. The agency selected Madison Square Park, a 6.2 acre New York City park, as the venue for the event. Located in Manhattan’s Flatiron District, the park offered the perfect amount of space for the event and a prime location with heavy pedestrian traffic. In addition to interactive experiences, the event featured a Tourism Pavilion, where visitors could enter to win trips to Colorado, visit Colorado.com, pick up Colorado brochures and more.
The Results
The agency returned an ROI of more than 10 to 1, garnering more than $1.3 million in advertising equivalency and more than seven million media impressions. Feature segments were secured in such high profile outlets as The Today Show, a live remote from 6-9 a.m. on Fox Good Day New York, the highest rated morning show in New York, as well as coverage on The Weather Channel, WCBS-TV, The Associated Press, and several local Colorado news stations. More than 50 national media outlets attended an exclusive media luncheon, including National Geographic Adventure, Travel + Leisure, The New York Times, Men’s Journal, Shape and Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel.