A recovery media campaign following unfortunate natural disasters.

Client: Visit Ventura
Location: Ventura, CA
Industry: Destination Marketing
Awards: Gold Adrian Award Digital Marketing

Visit Site

The catastrophic Thomas wildfire that tore through Southern California in December 2017 caused more than $2 billion in damages. The fire forced tens of thousands of Ventura, CA residents to evacuate and destroyed more than 500 homes. Just days after the fire's containment, the first measurable rainfall in the area led to massively destructive flash floods and mudflows, further ravaging this beautiful coastal community.

A Disaster Recovery Campaign
During its recovery, Visit Ventura partnered with Tempest for a pro-bono media campaign to let visitors know that it was ok to come back to Ventura. Many of Ventura’s tourism assets were fortunately largely untouched by the Thomas Fire. There was an opportunity to foster goodwill among the travel audience, inviting them to learn more about the pristine and unaffected areas of the community and to drive visitation to the area and inject much-needed economic activity into the destination.

Maximizing A Modest Budget 
To achieve Visit Ventura’s marketing goals on a modest, post-disaster budget, Tempest needed to plan and target media placement carefully. Based on Visit Ventura’s goals, Tempest performed advanced audience modeling through its in-house data management platform. Targeting audiences who matched specific behaviors and interests in core content areas such as outdoor adventure and beach travel helped us to zero in on Visit Ventura’s target audience and eliminated wasted ad spend.

Welcoming Creative & Messaging
The campaign was unique in that it was built on other concurrently running print placements, bringing the Visit Ventura brand to life in the digital space with brand fonts and carefully-selected photography. The creative delivered a cool, soothing depiction of the destination’s many natural and authentic travel experiences. Imagery evoked feelings of intimacy and familiarity among the target audience, inspiring them to picture their family building memories in Ventura. Campaign messaging connected with the audience through their sense of adventure, inspiring the audience to dream and inviting them to discover a classic California vacation.

Omni-Channel with Real-Time Optimization
Using our in-house programmatic trading desk, Tempest deployed a multi-channel campaign across mobile, desktop, and tablet devices and targeted lifestyle placements on publishers like Outside Online and National Geographic. Third-party targeting and look-alike audience modeling further expanded the campaign reach, while real-time performance tracking allowed our team to quickly optimize the campaign to capitalize on areas of success and eliminate underperforming areas. 

Measurable ROI
User behavior tracking was also critical in providing detailed intelligence on the behavior and booking patterns of the target market, giving the team insights into the economic impact. Ultimately the recovery campaign reignited leisure tourism in Ventura, generating measurable results and significant economic impact for the destination, including more than 900 flight bookings and an estimated $470,000 in economic impact based on economic performance data from the US Travel Association.

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