We were tasked with creating a marketing campaign that would truly capture Denton’s personality DNA. The idea was to create a picture of Denton as a destination, eventually bringing more “feet to the street,” and putting more “heads in beds.”

Following branding, Aria and the CVB hosted cooperative partner meetings to ensure that the brand was not only implemented effectively, but establish the CVB as a marketing leader for all stakeholders throughout the year.

Finally came activation, bringing the campaign to audiences through events, marketing, advertising and other promotional activities.

Step one: develop the campaign brand and implement across marketing channels, which included the 17 major events in Denton.

Denton is, without a doubt, a mecca for independent thinking, originality, and strong personality. We designed a logo that expresses these ideals, and gives a unified rallying cry to all Dentonites that they are Original. Independent.

Step two: establish a cohesive online presence. We opted to create a campaign microsite at escapetodenton.com, which serves as the hub for all online activities in and out, allowing us to track (with finite control) where our visitors were coming from, and where they were heading. The microsite has a consumer-friendly, event-focused theme intended to inform, and then pass visitors on to an action (like buying a ticket).

The microsite launched with event-specific pages for the Thin Line Film Fest, which included event details, hotel information, transportation information and links to the full schedule, TLFF website, and online ticket purchasing.

Our ad campaign ran over a 3-week period in the Dallas Observer, on Facebook, and on the Guidelive entertainment listing site for DFW.

Through the Dallas Observer, we ran two print ads, various banners on targeted landing pages of dallasobserver.com, an enewsletter campaign, and an SMS campaign.

On Facebook, we targeted over 13,000 users based on very specific interests including documentaries, film and Indies. With these interests alone, we had tens-of-thousands of impressions and a notable social reach, all within a 50-mile radius of Denton, TX. The click-through rate was significant and enabled us to continue to make a significant number of social connections.

Our sponsored event listing on Guidelive, which required a bid of a dollar-per-click, was featured on the website’s homepage rotator for about two weeks. Over the course of the campaign, we saw a number of visitor traffic generated by paid clicks, and an increase in organic traffic, as well.

Using social media monitoring and management tools, we were able to grow, engage and respond to social media conversations 24/7 during the campaign.

With the Thin Line Film Fest, for example, we saw substantial growth in both social media numbers and overall engagement throughout the campaign. In just over two weeks, we published more than 125 Facebook and Twitter posts combined and consistently monitored and engaged with the online community. We saw a Facebook fan increase of 192% and a Twitter follower increase of 108%.

Additionally, we ran several social media promotions throughout the duration of the campaign. We offered our online community chances to score discounted festival passes and freebies through both Facebook and Twitter. Needless to say, the promotions went viral, significantly contributing to our community engagement.