Parading in a Post-Pandemic World

Insight

2020’s global pandemic brought Baton Rouge to a complete standstill. That may not be the most novel of insights, yet tourism was hit harder than just about any industry when it came to COVID-19 and its lockdowns. Like many cities across the country, Baton Rouge is heavily dependent on the tax dollars that tourism brings in, so when that well dried up, we were left with a huge (and hugely important) question to answer: “How do we bring people back to Baton Rouge?”

Idea

No one does it quite like us.

Just as the way that people travel was completely turned on its head, so too was the way we shared the experience of Baton Rouge. Our 2021 campaign turned the camera inward and showed the special places and experiences that locals love. We painted an authentic yet vibrant and whimsical picture of life in Baton Rouge and invited all to come and experience it firsthand. We leveraged User Generated Content (UGC) through social channels to amplify the intentional, amateur lens through which our visitors see our city.

Impact

It worked.

Our digital content and social campaigns yielded nearly 180k mentions in 2021, resulting in more than 1.3 billion impressions and nearly a 60% positive sentiment to capture visitors within our focus of the city’s 6-hour drive market. As with previous campaigns, our benchmark for success was website traffic – we send people to the site, they plan their trip and then book their stay. Across the board, we saw massive year-over-year increases – a 68% increase in total traffic, a 68% increase in new users and a 70% increase in sessions. Not only that but by finely crafting the user experience with perfectly placed and curated itineraries, we saw visitors spending twice as long per session as they engaged with the content and explored everything Baton Rouge has to offer.