• by Tanya Gazdik , August 3, 2023

The tourism and visitors bureau for a suburban Columbus, Ohio town is taking a light-hearted approach in its efforts to attract young families looking for an easy weekend getaway. 

This audience is more likely to travel within a day’s drive and desires off-the-beaten-path and novel experiences, says Sarah Blatnik, marketing director, Visit Dublin, a private, nonprofit organization.

The target audience for the paid media campaign is ages 25-44, Blatnik tells Marketing Daily.

"Historically, this age range has shown consistently higher engagement with Visit Dublin content," she says.

The challenge for Lexington, Ky.-based Cornett, the organization’s new AOR, was, how do you get people talking about a mid-sized town with an Irish name in the middle of Ohio?

Cornett won the creative and media business in March after a review. Blatnik declined to reveal the previous agency or financial details of the campaign or the group’s annual budget. 

“The team at Visit Dublin came to Cornett looking for something new and weren’t afraid to take a light-hearted, playful approach,” Blatnik says. “When you rep a city that boasts a field of concrete corn statues, it’s hard to take yourself too seriously.”

The video campaign “You’re in Luck” plays into early '90’s sitcom nostalgia to position Dublin as a hidden gem.

The campaign includes three spots with 12 accompanying static executions and runs through August and again in October across Google and Meta platforms. 

Dublin is a place filled with wholesomeness and charm, says Jason Majewski, creative director at Cornett.

“We wanted a campaign that brought that forward and left a fun, lasting impression,” says Majewski, an Ohio native who graduated from Dublin Coffman High School in 2005. “We pretty much asked ‘what if this town was a sitcom?’ and brought it to life with visuals and music.”

Located 20 miles from Columbus, Dublin is best known for its Irish Festival and the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, an official PGA tour event. But the city also offers downtown dining in Bridge Park, the Columbus Zoo and public art including giant cement corn, according to the campaign.

“Humor and a little bit of kitsch felt right, to connect with busy parents looking for a quick little getaway,” Blatnik says. 

The work is the first from Cornett’s new senior copywriter, Alexis Wilkinson, who previously was a TV comedy writer on HBO's “Veep” and Fox's “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.”

Wilkinson says she drew inspiration from her television roots.

“There’s a real nostalgia for fun family shows set in these charming towns, so we wanted to create a modern version that’s uniquely Dublin,” Wilkinson says. “Being funny and self-aware about the city’s quirkiness felt right.”

Cornett looked at performance media results from best practices case studies in the travel and tourism category to create aggressive KPI benchmarks across Google and paid social platforms. 

“Halfway into the campaign, our optimization efforts have far exceeded our initial estimates, with an average of 46% lower costs across all performance media tactics,” says Chris Finnegan, vice president, director of brand connections at Cornett. “To date, we’ve delivered 90% of the impressions and clicks and 60% more video views than we originally estimated.”