Visit Seattle's New Video Channel Is Good But It Could Be Great
Skift Take
Tourism bureaus like Visit Seattle have an opportunity to attract a new user base with episodic video-content campaigns and video testimonials. Deciding that is the easy part. Funding is a little more challenging. The hardest part is correct place branding and then muzzling the marketers so the real content people can do their thing.
Visit Seattle launched a VisitSeattle.TV video channel with two different content campaigns, including 10 somewhat contrived first-time visitor testimonials and a cool music series partnership with Sean "Diddy" Combs' Revolt TV.
This new video marketing initiative is an expansion on the popular 2 Days In Seattle lifestyle content campaign that launched in 2012 to promote local small businesses. That standalone site tracked the social media posts of cultural influencers tagged on a Google Map of Seattle, categorized by Visit Seattle's core content pillars: arts, culture, food/wine, music and outdoor activities.
Moving forward, the overall purpose of VisitSeattle.TV is specifically designed to drive leisure room-night stays in the November through April off-season. The funding comes from an ancillary Tourism Investment District self-assessment fee created and paid for by 54 downtown Seattle hotels.
"We felt this was the perfect time to move into a little more content generation to allow consumers to dig deeper and get a different experience about our city," says Tom Norwalk, president and CEO of Visit Seattle. "We're fortunate that we have a group of hotels that support that and have enabled us to reposition and move forward differently."
The tourism bureau is doing everything right in terms of the strategy behind its content programming and online delivery. It's doing everything right in terms of rallying the hotels to create the TI
