An award-winning media campaign drives measurable economic impact.

Client:  Louisville Convention & Visitors Bureau
Location: Louisville, KY
Industry: Destination Marketing
Awards: Gold Adrian Award for Digital Marketing Campaign 
Other Projects: Website Design & Development

Visit Site

In mid- 2016, Louisville began a massive overhaul of its convention center leaving the Louisville Convention & Visitors Bureau without the ability to book major conventions until the rebuild was complete. To offset the economic impact of the convention center renovations, Louisville CVB partnered with Tempest to establish an aggressive tourism marketing media campaign to drive leisure travel and added economic impact.

Making Every Dollar Count with Programmatic
Tempest's in-house trading desk grants us unprecedented direct access to digital inventory across major publishers, websites, television, and radio, and more. Leveraging our programmatic trading desk, we used advanced targeting to focus the available media budget with laser precision on likely travelers to the destination and eliminate wasted ad spend. 

Data, Data, & More Data
Advanced audience modeling allowed Tempest to target audiences that behaved like previous Louisville visitors. Real-time campaign performance data gave our team the ability to optimize and capitalize on successes while eliminating underperforming strategies. Using Adara Site Impact data, Tempest was able to gain detailed intelligence on the target audience’s actual planning and booking patterns to continually optimize our approach.

An Omni-Channel Approach
Through an omni-channel approach across mobile, desktop, and tablet devices, Tempest placed messages across top publishers and travel booking sites such as Orbitz, Kayak, and Homeway and on social channels including Facebook and Instagram.

The Stages of Travel Booking
The media campaign successfully moved travelers from inspiration and planning, through to booking. First audiences would see inspirational messaging to build awareness and interest in Louisville. Then remarketing ads, specifically focused on value propositions, would capture visitors who had already seen previous messaging and entice them to book. 

Measurable Impact
This media campaign catapulted leisure tourism in Louisville, generating measurable results and  significant economic impact for the destination. This project established the Louisville CVB as a force in generating economic impact for the region, offsetting soft meeting and convention bookings with strong performance in the leisure travel segment. The Louisville CVB was also recognized by HSMAI with a Gold Adrian Award for this successful digital marketing campaign.

* Based on economic performance data from the US Travel Association.