01. The challenge
A disconnected, two-player CVB
What comes to mind when you think of Cincinnati? If you haven’t been recently, you might be picturing mountains of chili, the Cincinnati Reds, or maybe a fictional radio station.
If that's the case, you're missing the full picture.
More than a decade of reinvestment and economic development had fueled a renaissance for this cultural gem. Equally Midwestern and Southern, the unique geography and diversity of Cincinnati along with the neighboring communities of Covington, Newport, and Florence represent a cultural contrast like no other.
Put simply: long held perceptions didn’t match the reality of today’s Cincinnati visitor experience.
So why the disconnect?
With 2 separate CVBs telling the tale, a cross-border resistance to a connected narrative, and years of prioritizing convention and sports-associated travel has created a consideration gap with leisure travelers.
In 2020, the Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau and meetNKY seized the opportunity to embark on an ambitious strategic partnership. Reimagine their destination marketing efforts as a unified Cincy Region. However, deciding to combine resources and create a regional identity was just the first step of many.
Key insight
Cincy is where midwest friendliness and southern charm meet, and it’s the result of this collision that makes it a truly unique cultural experience built to be shared.
02. The setup
Embracing what makes the region unique.
Leveraging vibrant collisions of culture became the foundation of our strategy. And a new focus on diverse representation allowed us to more authentically represent the Cincy experience.
The result — an active invitation.
For locals to embrace their differences as a shared cultural expression. For visitors to experience it and make it their own.
03. The solution
Bringing an all new POV to overhaul leisure GTM.
Defining a new program for media and content from the ground up.
Starting with initial segmentation, we defined travel mindsets, interest, and consumer spending patterns to inform how we structured our campaigns.
Context informed our partners and placements, while behavior determined whether we were building general awareness for Cincy or offering content opportunities that could inform conversion. This lead to leveraging the region’s rich events calendar to fuel deeper engagement where audience interest could align with intent to visit.
We had our platform but to shift the narrative we now had to address what had long been a “one audience, check out the Reds” approach to the market.
With a more contextually informed program, we were able to gain significantly more efficiency out of our media investment.
We leveraged a blend of audience mindset/interests, travel and economic inputs, and zip code level demographic data to get most out of a mix of partners and channels across:
- Sponsored content
- Programmatic
- Digital OOH
- Search
- Partner Direct
- Social
04. The rollout
A mountain of content? Let’s make it a molehill.
While we rolled out new media programs and the region got ready to launch a redesigned website, we audited thousands of pages of content to help consolidate, optimize for search, and ensure each page aligned with the new brand messaging.
We also built out a custom content strategy and onboarded a dedicated content manager to keep all that blog and website content fresh and relevant.
