English Tourism Week (ETW) is an annual celebration, featuring a series of events showcasing visitor experiences and highlighting the value of tourism. The visitor economy is worth more than £100 billion a year to England and is the third largest employer, supporting 2.6 million jobs, many of them held by school leavers and young people.
ETW provided participating accommodation providers, attraction owners, tourist information centres and destinations with a vehicle to kick start the season. Additionally, as part of the week, the Tourism Superstar competition runs in conjunction with the Daily Mirror, with the public voting on a shortlist of entrants and the winner announced at the end of ETW.
markettiers was briefed to increase awareness of the delights on our doorstep, bringing to life ‘unexpected England’; encouraging people to explore the domestic holiday deals on offer during ETW; and driving votes for the Tourism Superstar competition.
The broadcast PR strategy deployed incorporated Interviews, both trailing (with a central VisitEngland spokesperson) and then throughout the week (using relevant local voices); filming opportunities (offering national, regional and local TV crews the opportunity to film events in their area); audio content production and distribution (recorded, edited and approved in advance of the week for placement throughout); as well as editorial radio competitions (giving away tickets to participating venues).
The markettiers account team and Newsroom confirmed, then briefed and coordinated, local voices taking part in the campaign to ensure key messages would be delivered throughout the on air activity. Likewise for non-interview based coverage (radio competitions) but with trusted presenters briefed to ensure a high level of understanding about the campaign and therefore able to effectively communicate the benefits to audiences.
By adopting multiple tactics, coverage was secured across both speech and music led programming, indexed against the many demographics falling within the target audience.
Key message rich broadcast coverage was confirmed on more than 65 radio stations and 5 ITV news programmes, with a combined reach in excess of 10 million adults.