“Blue Ridge Standard Time,” a tourism ad campaign that the Roanoke Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau used to lure people to the region for weekend getaways was a big winner – at a recent awards ceremony and in terms of the number of visitor driven to its website. The Public Relations Society of American (PRSA) Blue Ridge Chapter recently awarded six Summit Awards for the campaign, which was created via a partnership with Access Advertising & Public Relations and Mikula-Harris of Vinton.
The six-month Blue Ridge Standard Time campaign launched in May and positioned “Virginia’s Blue Ridge” as the ideal mountain vacation destination for the fall and summer. Target markets included Raleigh-Durham, Richmond, Hampton Roads and Virginia Beach.
An integral part of the effort was digital kiosks set up at 55 Kroger stores in the region – including some in the Roanoke area – playing the Blue Ridge Standard Time video on a loop, highlighting what makes the region a unique place to come to for a weekend or perhaps longer. Traffic to the blueridgetime.com “micro site” jumped 48% in terms of unique users, added advertising value was figured at $20 million and Facebook “likes” went up 50%.
Catherine Fox, the Director of Public Relations & Tourism for the Bureau, said the campaign was “our way of gearing folks … to get excited about coming [here] – one of our first targeted campaigns.” Once on the micro site those interested could be redirected to the RVCVB’s main website, visitroanokeva.com. Impressions of over 62 million were counted, meaning micro site visitors had gone through those many pages on the website in total.
Being in partnership with Kroger “helped us to leverage that message,” said Fox “in our prime target markets.” Driving visitors to the Blue Ridge Time website allowed them to peruse the various vacation packages available locally, the eateries, museums and other local attractions. Site visitors could also sign up to receive future messages about what’s coming up, in case they couldn’t make it this season. “We want to make sure they know some great reasons to come next year,” added Fox.
She said RVCVB president Landon Howard and the rest of the team “were very much impressed with the results in driving people to the website. We’re starting to see some of those results in our measurables – [including] lodging and attractions. We hope to continue to see those numbers grow.”
Fox also said the RVCVB was “very excited” that Roanoke is featured in a four-page spread in the current holiday edition of the Cooking with Paula Deen magazine. A writer for the publication lured to town late last year by the Bureau put the piece together. Fox said the author called Roanoke a place, “’Where mountain and city life meet.’ It’s exciting to see a great spread on our region.”
The feature has a food slant of course, with the writer describing peanut soup at Hotel Roanoke, biscuits at the Roanoker and Cheesy Westerns at the Texas Tavern. “These were all things that she felt were really part of Roanoke and she highlighted them in her article.” Fox said the valley was described as “home to everything from hiking to market strolling, arts and theater, to railroad history … epicurean cuisine to down-home cooking.” You can’t get much more Roanoke than that.
By Gene Marrano
