As travel restrictions lifted, attractions reopened and American adventurers slowly, but surely got back on the open road in mid-2021, the Warren County Convention & Visitors Bureau (WCCVB) made a strategic decision to refresh almost all of its marketing creative in hopes of hitting the ground running in what promised to be an exciting and travel-filled 2022.
One of the many creative elements the WCCVB chose to produce was a new series of print advertisements. The primary goal of those new print advertisements was three-fold:
1) To capture consumer attention with colorful, eye-catching visuals
2) To clearly convey the enormous array of attractions, events and activities travelers of all types can enjoy in Ohio’s Largest Playground
3) To ultimately drive prospective visitors to OhiosLargestPlayground.com to learn more about tourism opportunities in Warren County
Having already commissioned a sketch artist and graphic designer to produce custom illustrations of 24 of Warren County’s most prominent tourist attractions for its new 2022 Visitors Guide, the WCCVB repurposed those illustrations to create a series of action-packed, collage-style images. It then let those images do the talking, limiting each ad’s copy to a catchy and simple “Welcome to Your Playground” headline as well as a quick call-to-action.
The WCCVB ran its new print creative in multiple travel publications in 2022 and was extremely pleased with its performance. Visitors Guide requests, web site visitation and social media engagement spiked noticeably in markets where those print ads ran, confirming their effectiveness. In fact, the WCCVB’s web site, which saw record-breaking traffic in 2021, has seen an even more significant uptick in visitation since the debut of the new creative. The new creative was also extremely well received by the WCCVB’s Board of Directors, tourism partners and local community.
