'Fun is...' campaign a success in Portland
Fun is… tapping into an undiscovered
market.
Whitefish Mountain Resort and the
Whitefish Convention and Visitor Bureau (WCVB) teamed up this past
winter to run a test marketing campaign in Portland, Ore. The
results were substantially increased visitor traffic at both the
ski resort and in town.
Nick Polumbus, marketing director at
Big Mountain and WCVB committee member, reports a 300 percent
increase in lodging reservations out of Portland from the start of
the campaign to the end. By the beginning of February, when the
campaign peaked, they reported 43 reservations from Portland for
171 total nights.
“Portland lines up well with the
product we offer,” Polumbus said. “The people of Portland tend to
be seeking the experience we have.”
Jan Metzmaker, director at the WCVB,
agreed. She noted that the things people in Portland enjoy —
outdoor recreation, good coffee, micro brews — Whitefish offers.
She said the WCVB gauges the success of their marketing on resort
tax revenue, which is up over last year.
“Overall collection is up and Portland
visitors helped,” Metzmaker said.
The marketing campaign was crafted
around the website www.funiswhitefish.com which features a splash
page posing the open-ended question “Fun is…” Visitors can link to
information about the ski resort or town from the site.
Using that idea, 10 billboards were
placed at all corners of Portland, while print and online ads were
placed in the Oregonian newspaper and Portland Monthly
magazine.
Polumbus reports that the billboards
were seen by about 200,000 people every day and the total campaign
made about six million impressions.
“We used a road-blocking strategy,”
Polumbus said. “You couldn’t get into downtown Portland without
seeing one of these billboards.”
Both Polumbus and Metzmaker said that
the Amtrak service from Portland to Whitefish played a part in the
success of the campaign. The passenger train from Portland hooks up
in Spokane with cars coming from Seattle.
There are no direct flights from
Portland to Glacier Park International airport, however, which
could be a hurdle for future market growth. Currently, Oregon is a
top-10 visiting state to Big Mountain, while Washington and
Minnesota represent the top out-of-state visitors to Whitefish.
There are direct flights and Amtrak service from both Seattle and
Minneapolis.
While this year was only a test,
Polumbus expects both the resort and WCVB will further tap into the
Portland market next winter.
“I’ve never been a part of a coop
campaign that worked so well,” Polumbus said. “We’ll definitely do
it again.”
WCVB’s 2012 marketing plan shows Las
Vegas and Los Angeles as possible emerging markets, too.