As tourism industries around the country and world are hoping to leave behind the pandemic-induced downturn of the past year, the state of New York is hoping that it can keep traveling residents in the state, with the help of the new “Roam the Empire” campaign.
The initiative is an effort to let residents and businesses realize the benefits of keeping tourism dollars in the state economy. The end of 2020 marked a huge loss for the industry, in the form of 330,000 jobs gone and an estimated 56% loss in travel spending at New York state businesses.
This drop in spending was also reflected in a corresponding 45% decline in state and local tax revenues, according to the New York State Tourism Industry Association.
Spearheaded by the association, the campaign was developed pro bono by Mower, a marketing, advertising and public relations firm that was founded in Syracuse over 50 years ago and has offices in Rochester, Buffalo, Albany and New York City, as well as nationwide. One of the agency”™s specialties is travel and tourism; it represents the Westchester County Office of Tourism and Film.
Mary Gendron, senior vice president and managing director at Mower, was one of the leaders in developing the campaign.
In February 2021, Natasha Caputo, director for Westchester County Office of Tourism & Film and part of the campaign committee, approached Gendron to ask if Mower would be interested in working with the state association for a marketing project. Mower was then able to compete with another agency to be the ones to usher in the campaign.
“We came up with, among other concepts, Roam the Empire, as in roam the Empire State, and the committee loved it,” Gendron said. “We ended up getting to work developing a business-to-business campaign because our initial goal here was to give tourism organizations and attractions tools that they could use in conjunction with anything else they might be doing in terms of their own marketing efforts.”
Gendron explained that the rationale behind the campaign was twofold.
“(The goal was) to create a campaign that would encourage New York state residents to vacation within the state in 2021, for two reasons,” she said. “One is just to be able to emphasize all of the wonderful things that you can see and do within the state. There”™s just such a range of things to do and things that you might travel outside of the state to do, but don”™t have to. The other would be to really help the tourism industry recover, because it was so hard-hit by the pandemic.”
Many businesses and industry organizations threw their support behind the campaign and in turn benefited from it.
“What was intriguing to me was the idea that all of these destinations and tourism attractions within the state ”” which typically have their own strategy, their own marketing budgets and are competitive with one another ”” had decided there would be strength in numbers and it would be better this year for everyone to just come together and contribute to a joint cause,” Gendron said.
“Marketing efforts create a rallying cry around the idea of encouraging residents to vacation within the state. So that was really the spirit behind it.”
On the day it was launched, 50 different entities and state tourism association members signed up to participate. That number has grown to more than 80, and Gendron expressed optimism that it would continue to grow.
The program includes free toolkits and marketing assets for participants, for digital and print marketing, along with logos, digital apps and Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages that promote state attractions.
Regional destinations are also encouraged to do as much outreach as possible to promote the campaign.
Some media organizations around the state have also been offering promotions of the campaign for free. The New York State Press Service ran a pro bono ad in almost 300 newspapers. Advanced Media, Gendron said, is providing a $15,000 print and digital promotional grant over the course of the summer, which is expected to yield over 2 million digital impressions. Hearst Newspapers also gave the state association a $10,000 grant to run an ad within its network.
It may be hard to tell exactly how many dollars going into the industry will be a direct result of the Roam the Empire campaign. Aside from the engagement of all the participating entities ”” the full list of which is available at the state tourism association website ”” Gendron said that they will be able to measure engagement and campaign success in terms of digital, media and social media analytics.
