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HomeMy WebLinkAboutHAPI_SLO_RFP_FDESTINATION MARKETING SERVICES PROPOSAL Visit San Luis Obispo March 4, 2024 WE CREATE SMILES. Hello, we are HAPI. We only have thirty pages to meet you in person, so we’ll be mindful of tangents and digressions. HAPI is a full-service agency representing all types of businesses, but has a niche expertise in destination marketing for municipalities, and a particular fondness for markets that offer unique blends of outdoor experiences. We feel a strong connection to Visit San Luis Obispo because: 1) We are lovers of the outdoors and passionate about like-minded brands that make wonderful new experiences accessible to people; 2) HAPI is a boutique ad agency whose streamlined structure is a great match for mid-sized DMOs who want a partner that doesn’t require an unlimited budget to achieve big results; 3) HAPI relishes in the joy of taking already good brands, and pushing them even harder to increase potential they never dreamed possible, and overnight stays. HAPI is thrilled to have discovered this RFP for Destination Marketing Services and looks forward to bringing new thinking, and new visitors, to City of San Luis Obispo. MAX FARMER “One of the things that I love about SLO is the natural beauty. There’s rolling green hills like Oak Woodlands, and awesome beaches. I really like to surf and hike and camp, so there’s a lot of opportunity to do all my favorite outdoor activities. I also like that it has a small-town feel. The downtown is very cute with old historic buildings, good restaurants, and bars.” TESTIMONIAL MAXWELL FARMER GRADUATE STUDENT AT CAL POLY CREATING A BETTER PLANET FOR OUR CITY. A sustainability campaign developed by HAPI for Visit SLO. To kick off this proposal, HAPI has developed an ad campaign just for you, utilizing the Sustainable SLO sub-brand. SLO City’s environmental efforts aren’t just lip service, but a vision for a better future that aligns perfectly with the growing trend of sustainable tourism, and travelers’ preference to visit places with more socially conscious value systems. Here’s a cool stat: “On average, consumers are willing to pay 38% more to make their travels more sustainable.” * Sustainable SLO is a city-supported movement committed to keeping the region as pristine as Mother Nature intended. And boy is that appealing to visitors and a point of pride for residents. The following campaign takes SLO’s very own laws and transforms them into a powerful statement about the City, while also demonstrating the creative potential of your brand when HAPI thinking is applied. * Sustainable Travel Study, Consumer Attitudes, Values, and Motivations in Making Conscientious Choices. Expedia Group, Research 2022 SL In 2017, San Luis Obispo’s City Council approved an ordinance regulating the distribution of single-use plastic straws, bottles, and cups. Cheers to our health, and the health of our environment. IT WAS A PLASTIC STRAW THAT BROKE THE CAMEL’S BACK. CREATING A BETTER PLANET FOR OUR CITY. SL San Luis Obispo’s 10 Tall Initiative set a goal to plant 10,000 trees by 2035. Green zones benefit our health, and the health of our environment. WE’LL HAPPILY SHADE OURSELVES. WE WON’T SHADE OTHER DESTINATIONS. CREATING A BETTER PLANET FOR OUR CITY. SL San Luis Obispo’s Climate Action Plan includes a community-wide effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Cleaner air is good for our health and the health of our environment. CITY COUNCILS ARE KNOWN FOR HOT AIR. OURS IS KNOWN FOR FRESH AIR. CREATING A BETTER PLANET FOR OUR CITY. SL San Luis Obispo’s Climate Action Plan is an initiative to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035. It’s smart to tread lightly on our health, and the health of our environment. WALK ACROSS SAND WITHOUT LEAVING A FOOTPRINT. CREATING A BETTER PLANET FOR OUR CITY. YOU’RE A “SLO” BRAND. HAPI IS A FAST BRAND. HAPI is a famously fast, full-service agency that takes great pride in producing high-quality work and superb results for clients. Since opening in 2009, HAPI’s reputation has grown steadily, organically, and internationally through a sleeves-rolled-up, nose- to-the-grindstone work mentality that delivers innovative campaign after innovative campaign for a variety of brands. Clients describe HAPI as nimble, responsive, transparent, and honest – qualities inherent to the agency’s streamlined structure. HAPI has the staff, and a track record of proven results to effectively provide advertising and marketing services for Visit San Luis Obispo, and is an agency committed to making Visit SLO smile. HAPI IS A FULL-SERVICE AD AGENCY AND BRANDING FIRM MARKET / AUDIENCE RESEARCH Primary and secondary research. Qualitative and quantitative research. In-person interviews. Focus groups. Online surveys. We mine for data gold: unique insights that lead to own-able market positions. STRATEGY Strategy is all about relevancy – getting relevant messages in front of relevant target audiences at relevant times. HAPI blends research, trends, creative, and media to achieve desired results. CREATIVE Experienced, intelligent, and award-winning writing and art direction. BRANDING Brand positioning and messaging, logo creation, style guides, and business systems. MEDIA PLANNING AND BUYING We plan, negotiate, buy, place, implement, manage, monitor, and optimize traditional and digital media campaigns. Make-goods. Added values. Day flights. Right reads. Your ads will be seen. IAN HACKETT DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT PAIGE RODRIGUES DIGITAL STRATEGIST BRITTANY HERRMANN ACCOUNT MANAGER JASON HACKETT OWNER / CREATIVE DIRECTOR MIKE VERA CREATIVE DIRECTOR TAYLOR MARIN ASSOC. CREATIVE DIRECTOR LIZZY MOORE MEDIA DIRECTOR LAUREN ANDERSON ART DIRECTOR DANNY STOELLER DIRECTOR OF BRAND STRATEGY & ACCT. SUPERVISION BETHANY SPRINGER ART DIRECTOR CONSUMER RESEARCH, INSIGHTS AND ANALYTICS, CREATIVE, MEDIA HAPI provides the following services in-house. CONTENT DEVELOPMENT FOR VISIT SLO. Experienced, intelligent writing. Long-format. Bites. Interviews. Stories. Quips. Blogs. Social media posts. Website content. E-newsletters. Brand positioning. Case statements. Articles. Engage, inform, and get out. Copywriting from seasoned ad vets skilled at strategic and conceptual writing. Strong copywriting is an opportunity to elevate the Visit SLO brand. CREATIVE SERVICES FOR VISIT SLO. HAPI Art Directors are professional, multi-faceted and award-winning. In addition to being conceptual wizards and talented digital artists, HAPI requires all Art Directors to be experts in print and digital production. From resizing print and digital ads to designing and formatting 100-page Visitor’s Guides and preparing files for print, every HAPI designer is a highly creative and technical expert. HAPI Art Directors will serve as stewards of the Visit SLO branding, utilizing established design standards to elevate SLO’s great brand in new and dynamic ways. ORGANIC SEARCH PHILOSOPHY: BE ACTIVE, BUT NOT BEHOLDEN TO SEO BOTS. High activity equals high organic rankings – not trying to continually adjust website copy to meet Search Engine criteria. Blogs, articles and monthly newsletters distributed through relevant and interesting social content help organic search results. We do want to discuss Visit SLO verses the Visit SLO Cal campaigns, on how we can bolster synergies but also differentiate our brand. We want website visits! WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT FOR VISIT SLO. Website audits. Strategy. Site-mapping. Programming. Responsive. User-friendly CMS. Search-engine friendly. HAPI’s website approach: Make it experiential. Make it relevant. Make it intuitive. Make it optimized. We don’t build cookie-cutter websites unless you happen to be a client who is a cookie cutter. We will manage SEO, CMS, Blogs, plug-ins and content updates for Visit SLO’s website. RESEARCH & ANALYTICS FOR VISIT SLO. If HAPI is to turn Visit SLO into the best performing tourism campaign in California, and the standard by which all others are judged; data is essential. HAPI uses many research tools to gain a competitive edge. PLACER, ZARTICO, LONGWOODS, MRI-SIMMONS, SRDS, STRATA, GA4, FUTURE PARTNERS, SYMPHONY, BrandUSA TRAVEL AND ADMINISTRATION: HAPI WILL NOT CHARGE FOR TRAVEL. HAPI will not charge for travel to City of San Luis Obispo for meetings and presentations. Team members always appreciate a good room discount, but travel-related costs will be paid for by HAPI. HUNTER FROUD “San Luis Obispo is small enough where you frequently see people that you do know but just large enough where you can meet new people all the time. The environment is good, and people are generally happy and satisfied with living here. I also think that it is a beautiful place to live. It has all the amenities of a good smaller city, but it’s far enough out of the way that you feel like you’re able to detach a little bit.” TESTIMONIAL HUNTER FROUD SAN LUIS OBISPO RESIDENT DESTINATION MARKETING / GOVERNMENT EXPERTISE HAPI brings deep destination marketing and government expertise. We have worked with numerous destination marketing organizations (DMOs), business improvement districts (BIDs), tourism boards, and government entities. HAPI is familiar with the unique nature of government contracts; the processes and procedures the importance of remaining compliant with the details of the contract and state laws, and how to work with public officials and multiple stakeholders. Patience and diplomacy are the keys to rebranding success as well as an inclusive, collaborative process that effectively navigates ideas through multiple decision-makers and committees. HAPI’S ONBOARDING / ACCOUNT TRANSITION PROCESS HAPI has undergone many account transitions and has a four-step process. 1. DISCOVERY MEETING HAPI will meet with the Visit SLO team in person to tour the City, review work history, processes, current workload, upcoming campaigns, media and/or vendor commitments. We notify third-party vendors and media reps of transition, provide new HAPI contact information and set up meetings with vendors to discuss their needs. Our goal is to familiarize our staff with SLO’s team and objectives as quickly as possible. 2. FILE / ASSET / GRAPHICS TRANSFER HAPI collaborates with SLO and the outgoing agency to collect all current and archived files. This occurs through the delivery of a hard drive to HAPI from the outgoing agency that contains all digital files. HAPI loads all files to its internal server. All HAPI servers are backed-up outside the agency for redundancy and security. 3. STATUS SHEET CREATION HAPI utilizes ASANA, online project management software, and inputs all jobs and job information into ASANA, which can be viewed by the agency, as well as clients if needed. 4. WEEKLY MEETINGS HAPI schedules weekly status meetings with clients to review projects and discuss upcoming jobs. This is a weekly check-in to make sure HAPI and the new client agree to next steps and stay up to date on all projects. WILSON KIFF “SLO is never boring and there’s always something new to do. I love seeing live music downtown. Hiking is one of my favorite things to do and it’s so beautiful once you get up the hills. Wine tasting is also something we have. It really has just a piece of everything.” TESTIMONIAL WILSON KIFF UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT AT CAL POLY BRAND MANAGEMENT FOR VISIT SLO. 1. BRAND AUDIT HAPI provides an in-depth S.W.O.T. analysis of Visit SLO’s marketing and advertising, creative, messaging, campaign performance, paid media expenditures, website analytics, target audience profiles, reporting and research. 2. NATIONAL / LOCAL TOURISM RESEARCH HAPI layers in current strategies with local, regional, and national travel and tourism trends and insights. 3. HOTELIER ONE-ON-ONE INTERVIEWS HAPI will conduct one-one-one interviews with SLO City hoteliers to set campaign expectations, objectives, and hearts-in-beds benchmarks. 4. BRAND GUIDELINES HAPI will import and prepare Visit SLO logos, brand fonts, messaging direction, primary and secondary color palette to ensure brand continuity. 5. PROJECT MANAGEMENT / HAPI SERVER HAPI will collect all Visit SLO design files and will open new folders on its agency server. HAPI organizes and tracks projects by job numbers, and via its online project management platform. 6. MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS PLAN FORMULATION HAPI will begin formulating a fiscal year marketing and communications plan based on traveler trends, high- and shoulder-season visitations, local SLO events, new direct flights, and City Offerings. PAID MEDIA PLANNING: A REALLY IMPORTANT PAGE! How HAPI will increase Visit SLO’s paid media budget without increasing it. 1. HAPI DOESN’T CHARGE MEDIA COMMISSIONS Traditional agency models charge media commission of up to 25% of the net paid media cost which can amount to millions of dollars. HAPI does not collect media commissions. Visit SLO is assured that HAPI is avoiding conflicts-of-interest and that all media recommendations are made in the best interest of your brand. SLO’s paid media budget will have a greater reach and frequency and conversion for the cost because 100% of the media budget will be used to market San Luis Obispo. 2. HAPI IMPLEMENTS DIGITAL CAMPAIGNS OURSELVES HAPI implements and manages all digital media (i.e., Programmatic Display, CTV, Paid Social) campaigns in-house through first-party platforms. By managing digital media directly, HAPI removes third-party markups. And HAPI can pull reporting as needed, in real-time – we don’t have to wait – and manages, monitors and optimizes campaigns daily. 3. HAPI OPTIMIZES DIGITAL / PAID SOCIAL CAMPAIGNS DAILY / WEEKLY With HAPI, Visit SLO has a media partner who proactively improves digital campaign performance daily. HAPI continually A-B tests creative ad units, pauses under-performing ads, re- allocates budgets to ensure greater efficiencies and campaign performance, and provides proof of tourism marketing investment. HAPI believes in the power of Cost-Per-Click (CPC) campaigns verses Cost Per Impression (CPM) campaigns. Visit SLO only pays when an ad is clicked. HAPI applies UTM code tracking, conversion pixels, first-party data, re-targeting and lookalike strategies to digital media, and works closely with OTAs and booking engines to help track ROI. 4. SLO MEDIA DASHBOARD AND DETAILED CAMPAIGN REPORTING HAPI will create a Visit SLO paid media dashboard that can be viewed daily by the marketing team, which provides live campaign performance metrics from multiple sources. HAPI provides detailed (down-to-the-penny) campaign reporting and performance with notes on monthly activity, insights and recommendations moving forward. HAPI uses these findings to hone future campaign strategies. Does targeting need to change? Does the creative need to change? Does timing and budget need to change? SLO stakeholders will receive in-depth campaign reporting with high-level insights. OBJECTIVE: Create a marketing campaign that targets the newly introduced direct flight feeder markets, generates awareness for San Luis Obispo, and incentivizes travelers to book a trip via SLO City’s many experiences. CREATIVE PLATFORM: TASTE THE SLO LIFE – TARGETED DIRECT FLIGHT PROMOTION San Luis Obispo will soon have ten new direct flights from destinations around the country. Yay! To celebrate these new feeder routes and endear SLO City to new travelers, Visit SLO City will introduce a special promotion, Taste the SLO Life. The promotion allows flyers to use their airline tickets at participating SLO City retailers for special discounts. During the Pre-Proposal Conference, the Visit SLO team mentioned the addition of multiple direct flights to SLO City. Consider this a mini work plan, to showcase the agency’s thinking on campaigns like this, HAPI has developed a strategy, creative platform with creative assets, and media plan for a direct flight promotion. DIRECT FLIGHT PROMOTIONAL CAMPAIGN FLIGHTS FLIGHTSFOR SHOW YOUR AIRLINE TICKET FOR A FREE OR DISCOUNTED FLIGHT OF WINE OR BEER. VISITSLO.COMBOARDING PASS VISITSLO.COMBOARDING PASS SHOW YOUR AIRLINE TICKETS FOR A DISCOUNTED ROOM AT PARTICIPATING HOTELS AND HOMESTAYS. PROMOTIONAL PRINT ADS VISITSLO.COMBOARDING PASS SHOW YOUR AIRLINE TICKETS FOR A DISCOUNTED APPETIZER AT A LOCAL SPORTS BAR. VISITSLO.COMBOARDING PASS SHOW YOUR AIRLINES TICKETS FOR DISCOUNTED TICKETS AT A LOCAL EVENT VENUE. PROMOTIONAL PRINT ADS shareslo 362 likes #FlightsForFlights #VisitSanLuisObispo shareslo 362 likes #WindowsForWindows #VisitSanLuisObispo shareslo 362 likes #TouchdownForTouchdown #VisitSanLuisObispo PAID SOCIAL ADS DISPLAY ADS 728X90 300X600 336X280 LANDING PAGE OTHER: SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT EXPERTISE HAPI manages social content for three clients, Old Town Scottsdale, Water - Use It Wisely and Red River Brewery & Distillery. HAPI creates all static and video content, manages the calender, schedules posts, engages with followers and provides monthly reporting. For the three accounts, HAPI has increased followers, videos views, and overall engagement dramatically by blending branding with current social trends, and continual and strategic posting, and by involving local merchants in the process. Visit SLO has a social media partner. That is great. HAPI can work seamlessly with that team, as needed to create content. Here are links to HAPI-managed Instagram feeds: @OLDTOWNSCOTTSDALE @WATERUSEITWISELYAZ @REDRIVERBREWERYANDDISTILLERY NEW MEXICO TRUE DIDN’T RING TRUE FOR RED RIVER. Town of Red River, NM has approximately 500 residents and welcomes more than 350K visitors annually. When Town of Red River hired HAPI as its agency of record, we made a bold decision to move away from New Mexico’s True campaign that blankets New Mexico towns in a sea of sameness. It was a difficult decision because we’d be forced to give up important cooperative marketing dollars. But we chose brand independence, and the freedom to promote our town our way. The Town embraced HAPI’s new branding and how it represented the town and used it on their own merch and promotional items – further unifying and distinguishing Red River. Since then, the new brand has been consistently marketed and advertised to millions of consumers, creating emotional connections and driving visitation and loyalty. And five years later, Red River remains a HAPI client and one of our favorite places to visit. A HOT SPOT FOR HIGH-SPEED FAMILY CONNECTIONS. TARGET HEART RATE: WHO CARES I’M ON VACATION. ROAD TRIPS SHOULD HAVE TWO THINGS IN COMMON. NATURE AND FRESH AIR. WE LIKE ADRENALINE VACATIONS. SOME PEOPLE PREFER BEACH VACATIONS. Cross-country and downhill skiing. Snowboarding. Snowmobiling. Snow shoeing. Hiking. Fishing. Toasty fires at the end of the day. We’re that sleepy town that’s never sleepy. HAPI RESULTS Red River Blitz Campaign aired in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and New Mexico SUMMER CAMPAIGN DURATION: 5/19/21 – 6/30/21 TOTAL IMPRESSIONS: 50,512,500+ WEBSITE VISITS: 85,000+ REFERENCE RED RIVER OFFICE OF TOURISM & ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT April Ralph Director of Economic Development and Tourism C: 719.221.2391 E: april.prout@msn.com