On Tuesday morning, the Okaloosa Board of County Commissioners approved the Tourist Development Department’s request to allocate $955,000 in remaining paid media and campaign production dollars to create a media campaign for the Washington DC metro area.
One of their current campaign goals is to increase in-market visitor spend.
- The DC area has an average spend of $255 compared to the benchmark of $226 for our top 10 markets.
According to the TDD Director Jennifer Adams, media pricing in that market is now reasonable since we are out of an election cycle, and their agency would like to “seed brand awareness in the DC area now in an effort to lift visitor spend moving forward.”
“This is the first time that we’re able to get into this market in this manner without political noise,” said Adams. “It’s a good market for us. They spend the most of any other target market that comes to Destin-Fort Walton Beach.”
According to Adams, the TDD’s approach would be to get their brand message out starting as early as this week, in-and-around the Olympics and other prime-time programming. The TDD would then target this market again in January when they promote more of a call-to-action.
“We have daily non-stop flights and Washington DC residents still do drive here,” continued Adams. “And it’s a great opportunity to fill the shoulder season.”
