Las Vegas Mixes Real-Life and Social Campaigns for Latest Marketing Pitch

Las Vegas used a combination of online and real-time marketing to get the word out about its new summer marketing campaign this week.

The campaign, Vegas Season, is all about getting Americans to think about summer as the best time to visit Vegas.

To reach an audience across the U.S., Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau bought rights to a 24-hour exclusive Promoted Trend on Twitter.

LVCVB then backed up the social campaign with real-life action by placing “carolers” throughout the streets of Chicago. The real-time event in Chicago created additional social content and got people talking about the campaign.

It's finally Friday and #VegasSeason is in full swing! Get into the spirit! #SeasonofLiving http://t.co/nL1jfLX0Hi pic.twitter.com/U8Ukb2MkMl

— Las Vegas (@Vegas) June 20, 2014

What better way to celebrate 100 years at Wrigley Field than with 100 Vegas Carolers? #VegasSeason pic.twitter.com/o2MG2Xqay8

— Gerri Angelo (@gerriangelo) June 20, 2014

In 24 hours, @Vegas received three times the normal account mentions and 8 times the amount of normal follows. It reached a 7.59% engagement rate, which is about on par for promoted Twitter trends. The purchase also led to 46 million trend impressions and 3,365 mentions of #VegasSeason.

“If you look simply at the statistics from the Twitter promoted trend, you see the impact in terms of mass reach and engagement our message had when you measure our program against the benchmarks,” says Nicholas Mattera, director of digital engagement at LVCVA.

“It was clear that we had achieved our goal – people were aspiring to be in Las Vegas, they began thinking about how they were going to spend their next trip in the destination.”

The real-time event in Chicago created additional social content and got people talking about the campaign. R&R Partners, the agency of record for LVCVA, found that both parts of the campaign were necessary to make an impact.

“One without the other would have limited our success. In order to sustain engagement throughout the 24 hour promotion, we needed to be able to create a significant amount of “real-time” content,” explains Mikey Cramer, director of social media at R&R Partners.

“The Chicago activation successfully provided dynamic assets for us to push out, while the Promoted Trend gave us the reach beyond just Chicago.”

Many destinations opt only for a digital and social campaign or a real-life event that they then spread on social media. Vegas’ attempt to do both suggests that destinations will need to cover all bases to create a truly integrated campaign and see an impact.