Florida Finds That the Best Place to Advertise Is Inside Your Refrigerator

Tourism ads are often seen on billboards, taxi tops, and Facebook sidebars, but Visit St. Petersburg Clearwater hit marketing gold when they decided to take a more personal approach.

The Florida tourism board placed an ad and teaser for a free trip on 12 million Florida’s Natural orange juice cartons sold nationwide. The cartons included a special URL FloridasNaturalBeaches.com so the organization could track the exact impact of the campaign.

In the first three weeks of the campaign, the tourism board reported 306,157site page views and 146,401 free trip entries across Facebook, mobile, and online. It also garnered 5,304 e-newsletter sign-ups and 2,019 destination magazine requests.

Visit St. Pete says more than 80 percent of entries have been from mobile devices, suggesting consumers are typing in the URL or looking up the destination as soon as they see the ad.

“The object of the marketing partnership was to position the St. Pete/Clearwater area as ‘the natural choice for a beach getaway’ while partnering with a wholesome, family-friendly brand like Florida’s Natural. Plus the pairing of a Florida destination with a Florida-based OJ company is a natural fit, no pun intended,” explains David Downing, deputy director at Visit St. Pete.

Downing would not reveal the cost of the campaign, a cross-promotional effort between the tourism board and Florida’s Natural, but equated it to about the cost of a full page ad in daily newspaper. The ads will run from mid-January through mid-April.

It’s too bad that Visit St. Pete did not think of the campaign sooner.

After almost 50 years of growth, U.S. orange juice sales recently hit their lowest level in at least 15 years as eating habits and lifestyles that included actually sitting down for breakfast change.