Goals: Clearly state your marketing goals. What did you strive to achieve using this piece or program?
In the fall of 2023, the NJ Division of Travel and Tourism launched its new and rigorously tested campaign, “Little State, Lotta WOW” as a powerful platform to showcase the diversity of traveler experiences throughout all seven regions and 21 counties. One of the true stars of this integrated marketing campaign was the TV commercials. Using an ear-catching, make-you-stop-and-pay-attention signature soundtrack – that varies by musical genre for each season – these commercials showcase one timely and relevant WOW after another after another to break through the noise and compel the viewing audience to take action. The primary objective of these commercials is to drive viewers to VisitNJ.org for vacation inspiration and planning. Our team identified 13 target markets based on efficiency, past visitation patterns, growth potential, driving distance from NJ and available comparable product offerings. While these markets had all been a part of our digital outreach for many years adding broadcast buys provided additional impressions, reach and frequency with a supplementary objective to grow visitation in our existing “local” markets and identify potential in secondary markets for future growth. In the Spring of 2023, we began experimenting with high-impact CTV/Streaming ad units that could be paused to employ an interactive element. We saw encouraging metrics including high interaction time, resulting in extremely engaged visits to our website. We expanded this strategy with the Fall 2023 Little State Lotta WOW campaign to include Hulu, Paramount+ and Peacock, running different types of interactive ads on all three platforms with the added goal of fostering greater education of NJ offerings through increased engagement opportunities over a traditional video spot.
Results: Which of your original goals did you achieve and how? How did you measure the effectiveness of the piece or campaign? Entrants should provide quantifiable results of their tactics or campaigns. (for example, click through rates or ad equivalency)
Between broadcast and digital buys, we measured an 87% penetration of target markets during the launch phase of the campaign. This deep penetration helped the TV commercials achieve their objective of driving traffic to VisitNJ.org. Website analytics show a whopping 68% increase in site visits and a 60% boost in page views. Of course, the ultimate goal is to impact visitation. Annual visitor volume grew 4%, with growth occurring in nearly all 13 targeted television markets. In a 2022 vs. 2023 and 2023 vs. 2024 first half of the year assessment, we were able to show positive change in visitation in nearly every target market through our data collection with Zartico. By scoring the different data points including visitation, market density, spend and hotel occupancy, we were able to create a composite score, ranking markets for future media investment, thus achieving our supplementary goal of market identification with an added benefit of visitation grown in both local and secondary markets. The Peacock unit focused on trivia with a scrollable poll to teach consumers WOW facts about NJ they may not have known, yielding incredible results: The BrightLine Accelerator ad delivered an amazing engagement rate of .91% – outperforming the benchmark of .77%. As one of the top-performing ad formats, the poll helps the brand gain additional metrics on top of the custom execution – we learned that viewers preferred hiking the Appalachian trail (61%) over casino hopping (39%). The Paramount+ Unit employed a pause and scroll feature highlighting the best things to do in NJ. Viewers could explore the ad using their remote to access an image gallery with additional details and a QR code leading to a corresponding landing page. The ad garnered over 9,500 engagements (at a rate of 23%), with 70% of the engaged views exploring all five images in the gallery – earning an average of 71 seconds/engagement.
Return on Investment: How much revenue has the piece or campaign generated and how does this compare to your goal? What was the return on investment?
Visitors to New Jersey spent $49.1 billion across a range of sectors in 2023, expanding by 8% YOY and registering 6% above 2019 levels. Having achieved our visitation goal the additional spending helped us to exceed our goals. An ROI on just the additional 8% puts us at 2:1 with an overall ROI of 40:1.
Entry Title
NJ Travel & Tourism Little State, Lotta Wow Commercials
Division
Advertising - Connected TV/Streaming/Linear