Technology is getting so user-friendly that even horses in Lexington, Kentucky, can use a GoPro.
Or, at least, wear one.
That’s thanks to the marketing team at VisitLEX, led by Gathan Borden, Vice President of Marketing. Borden, a tourism industry veteran of 13 years, was hired in 2015 to take the Convention and Visitor Bureau’s marketing strategy and “completely flip it on its head.”
“What we’ve really tried to do with a lot of our digital stuff in terms of content is break through the clutter,” Borden says, “and do some non-traditional things that really get people talking about us.”
Over the last four years, getting people talking is exactly what VisitLEX has done, focusing on the horse and bourbon culture that sets Lexington apart from other U.S. cities.
Unique digital campaigns it has completed include “Horses Filming Horses,” a video series in which horses wore GoPro cameras and filmed each other on a farm, and “A Horse Walks into a Bar,” a series of brief comedy skits that each put a twist on popular expressions, for example: “You can lead a horse to water, but he’ll probably ask for a bourbon.”
VisitLEX has won awards for some of its efforts, including a first-place award at the Destinations Council’s Destiny Awards for its “NeighSMR” video, which plays off the trend of autonomous sensory meridian response—better known as “ASMR”—videos that use gentle sounds to relax the listener. In “NeighSMR,” those sounds are created by a horse named Hank eating apples, carrots and peppermints.
The video has more than 640,000 views, and according to Borden, it has even been shared by YouTube with its brand advertisers and sales reps as an example of how they can better leverage trends in their video marketing.
Outside of online videos, the VisitLEX team has used technology including virtual reality headsets and 360-degree videos of local points of interest to show people at trade shows what it’s like to walk around in Lexington.
It has even enhanced existing downtown walking tours with new technology.
“We took the traditional methods that travelers already knew in terms of history and walking tours, and just added technology to that,” Borden says. “There are ten points of interest on the augmented reality experience – take your phone, open up your camera, and when you point your camera over the point of interest, the building comes to life on your phone.”
For example, an Abraham Lincoln mural speaks to visitors for two minutes when they scan his face with the app. Users who scan the Man o’ War mural downtown can watch the famous racehorse’s final race.
“It’s a really cool experience, but it’s very tech-forward,” Borden says. “Not a lot of people are used to that kind of tech, so we’re a little ahead of the game.”
Being ahead of the tech game is starting to pay off for VisitLEX, which has seen year-over-year bookings on Expedia.com grow by 7 percent, and organic searches in one of its target markets, Washington, D.C., jump by 91 percent year-over-year.
“It’s been a totally new concept that we do. It took about four years to get to this space where we’re really comfortable with this kind of content, but it really started internally,” Borden says.
The marketing team works with an agency to flesh out original ideas and pays close attention to the calendar to ensure they capitalize on existing events with related creative content.
“We try to figure out what we can create that will spike brand conversations throughout the year,” Borden says.
Next up for the VisitLEX marketing team is a redesigned website, expected to be up by July 2020, and the completion of a Visitor Profile Study to help Lexington bring in both new and returning visitors.
Borden says it’s exciting to see other destination marketing organizations begin to get more creative with their own digital content.
“People need that validation from someone else in the industry that it’s OK to take risks,” he says. “They can take it back to their superiors and say, ‘Somebody else is doing it, so we need to stay in pace with the market.’”
