Making Minnesota more shareable.
Social, Experiential, Influencer Marketing
About Explore Minnesota Tourism
Minnesota might have more shoreline than California, but it gets outspent tenfold by many states. It was time to rethink Explore Minnesota Tourism’s branding and connection strategy. We had to create a never-ending wave of get-here-now inspiration.
The journey to the big idea.
Competitively, every state took the same approach. Ads teeming with inaccessible imagery. A struggle that led to a breakthrough.
Segmentation studies identified key audiences: Cultural Explorers and Spontaneous Adventurers. Both wanted to feel less like tourists and more like locals.
Minnesota steps into the social spotlight.
#OnlyInMN activated residents and visitors to share their local discoveries, turning them into spontaneous ambassadors uploading virtual postcards of our state.
660,000 hashtagged photos. One-of-a-kind experiences in spades.
The hub on Explore Minnesota's website curated #OnlyInMN content and put travelers on their journey with trip-planning tools.
We invited four influencers to spend 10 days traveling different regions of Minnesota and share their #OnlyInMN experiences.
Their social dispatches, in the form of photos, videos, blog posts and tweets, reached millions of potential future visitors and created tens of thousands of engagements with the campaign.
Minnesota. Exported.
MNstagram booths were shipped across the country to give potential visitors an #OnlyInMN experience to share.
Converting pixels to paint. And passersby to visitors.
Now it was time to evoke what vacationing in Minnesota feels like.
The land of 10,000 lakes. Now the land of more authentic experiences.
3.5M
Generated incremental visits numbered 3.5 million, and generated incremental traveler spending reached $388.8 million.
1.5M
Explore Minnesota received 1.5 million web visitors in three months – a 35% increase.
