Co-op Marketing Yields More Bang for the Buck
By Joanne DiBona, Communications Director
As any businessperson knows, advertising does not come cheap--yet it is a critical part of the success of any enterprise.
Although it is often difficult to think of tourism as a business, the fact remains that it is, indeed, San Diego’s third largest industry and heavily depends on the same sales and marketing techniques used by any successful business or corporation.
The San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau (ConVis) has long recognized the fact that advertising is a crucial element in keeping visitors and convention delegates coming to our destination. For the past several years, our total advertising budget has averaged around $5 million. This may seem like a lot of money to some. However, when you consider ads in high profile publications or on major television networks can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a shot, it’s pretty evident that even a budget of $5 million or more has its limitations when your goal is to advertise an entire region as a premiere visitor and convention destination.
This is where the idea of co-operative (“co-op”) marketing enters the picture. For years, ConVis has used this creative marketing technique to get the most bang for its advertising buck. We’ve joined forces with countless numbers of national corporations—from credit card companies to car manufacturers to national airlines—in co-op advertising ventures on both a regional and national basis.
Together with our participating ConVis members, which include our major attractions, hotels, restaurants, and airlines, among others, we’ve pooled money and resources to get the ultimate exposure in various advertising arenas. These include television commercials, newspaper travel supplements, travel magazine inserts, and “win-a-trip” promotions, among others.
While the majority of our co-op partners are national corporations located outside the area, we had the pleasure of putting together a highly successful “win-a-trip-to-San Diego” campaign this summer with San Diego’s own PETCO corporation.
Together with PETCO, we created a colorful eye-catching poster that featured golden retrievers lined up next to surfboards on the beach. The poster, which also utilized our San Diego “brand” of warm, sunny colors and scenes in its design, announced the contest rules and invited PETCO shoppers to try their luck at winning a prize.
The poster was placed in 650 PETCO stores nationwide from July 25 to August 15. Shoppers could register to win a grand prize trip for four people to San Diego, which included airfare; accommodations at the Omni Hotel; tickets to a Padres game; an Enterprise rental car; passes to the San Diego Zoo and SeaWorld; and dinner at Sammy’s Woodfired Pizza.
While there was only one grand prize winner—that honor went to a happy family in Northern California—PETCO shoppers also had a chance to win 20 first prizes, which included a year’s supply of dog or cat food. It’s not hard to imagine that each time a PETCO shopper registered for a prize in front of the colorful poster, the image of San Diego as a vacation paradise was reinforced. In advertising jargon, this is termed, “top-of-mind-awareness,” and it is an extremely important element in determining the success of any advertising effort.
It is estimated that some 4.5 million PETCO customers across the nation saw the in-store messaging during the promotion. In addition, people could also register to win the prize on-line by clicking on a link on the PETCO website at www.Petco.com or on the ConVis website at www.sandiego.org. As an added bonus, promotional copy appeared in 26 million PETCO newspaper circulars distributed nationwide, spreading the San Diego image once again to all those readers who of course couldn’t miss seeing the line up of adorable dogs on one of our beautiful beaches.
An astonishing three million entries were received, either by filling out a registration coupon in the PETCO store or clicking on the on-line sites—three million people who will have San Diego on their minds the next time they start to think about planning their next vacation.
Thanks to the synergy and cooperation of our members, together with San Diego’s own PETCO corporation, San Diego received hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid media value as a result of this promotion. By capitalizing on the popularity of our region as a vacation destination and the availability of a national network of PETCO stores, we were able to get a tremendous return on investment that benefited all our partners as well as San Diego’s visitor industry as a whole.
I think you’ll agree: that is marketing at its very best.
