It was an honor to be a lead judge once again for the US Travel ESTO Awards, a celebration of award winning travel marketing. Judging is now complete, and the 2025 finalists have been announced. Check them out HERE.
Although I am very much sworn to secrecy until after the awards ceremony, held at the end of the ESTO conference Aug 17-19 in Phoenix, AZ what I can offer is observations of what goes into winning campaigns, based on previous years judging both the State and Destination Awards. I’ve shared my thoughts below.
State Awards (formerly Mercury Awards) recognize state and territory tourism offices for standout destination marketing initiatives, and the Destination Awards (formerly Destiny Awards) honor destination marketing offices (DMOs) that push the boundaries of marketing and promotion.
I also hit on some of these observations during a podcast interview with Mark Lapidus, on Brand USA Talks Travel in early May. If you missed it, LINK here to have a listen to that episode. There’s lots of other juicy marketing insight shared there, plus some background on the creation and evolution of my other brand – the award winning carryonqueen.com adventure travel media site, which took second place in the TMAC (Travel Media Association of Canada) 2025 awards for Best Self Published Travel Media Website!
Award winning campaigns
Amazing campaigns are a combination of great strategy and great creative execution. One without the other simply doesn’t work, or at the very least comes up less effective. Although strategy may well deliver ROI, memorable creative is usually what takes campaigns over the top in terms of success.
Strategy
- Understanding who the target audience is at a deep level, and what will resonate with them. This informs language, images and appeals used
- Matching media vehicles and channels where the target audience can be found
- Selecting media channels to work well with the creative approach, and in a way that helps the campaign stand out from what competitors are doing
- Leverage trends and shifts in media consumption to maximize exposure
- Tapping into societal trends in some way
- Utilize multiple strategic touch points, and interactions throughout the buyer journey
- Have a story arc that makes the campaign “word of mouth” shareable
- ROI which is measurable and linked back to the objectives of the campaign. This might be increased awareness, earned media coverage, bookings, revenue generated, site visits, inquiries, email data capture, downloads, social media impressions etc
Creativity
- Generating ideas, alternatives and possibilities in new ways
- Tapping into something different and memorable
- Challenging assumptions, the expected and the usual with solutions that are unexpected, rare, and not the status quo
Creativity is the magic sauce in a campaign. Creativity can be hard to express, but you know it when you see it. Let’s look at an example from past ESTO Awards – Tourism Seattle’s mobile “rain booth”, and their campaign called “kissing in the rain.”
The Seattle Rain booth
A kiss in the rain is one of the most romantic moments in cinema. And while those moments may be second nature to Seattle residents, not every city can be so lucky. So to help destination marketing client Visit Seattle, the experiential marketing campaign brought a little precipitation to two rain-starved cities with “The Seattle Rain Booth.”
They brought the experiential marketing campaign to life by activating the booth in the bustling, sweltering centers of Venice Beach, Florida and Scottsdale, Arizona, encouraging visitors to experience what Seattle’s real cozy season feels like as they consider their travel options for the fall season.
The installation was based around “kissing in the rain” scenes from movies. Visitors could select their backdrop, and they were invited to share photos from the both in their own “movie promotion” poster for social media. The summer of 2022 delivered record heat to the southern US, so the booth proved popular for guests wishing to cool off. I also love how Seattle re-banded the “rainy season” as their “cozy season.” Perhaps my home town of Vancouver could learn from that?
To close the loop online, travelers could choose from dozens of hotel partnership packages designed around a little misty romance.
ROI results
This powerful experiential marketing example caught the attention of nationwide media outlets and resulted in over $200 million in earned media impressions, and the highest hotel booking rate for downtown Seattle on record. Incorporating all five senses into destination marketing truly captured the audience’s imaginations, and Visit Seattle saw the results. Plus, they won big time at the ESTO Awards that year. It was a campaign with outstanding creative approach, plus a solid strategy behind it. Check it out here. There’s a great video too!
I’ll be circling back in a future post to share this years 2025 ESTO AWARDS winners, and how those campaigns stood out.
