Pure Integrated Destination Marketing

On Travelpulse this week, it was reported that the Pure Michigan Facebook page has attracted over 20,000 fans and that Travel Michigan has “retained the top ranking amongst the 50 official U.S. tourism office websites in the use of social media.” While these achievements are impressive, the big lesson here is not so much in their recent social media successes but in the how far they have come and the way that the Michigan Tourism office got there. 

The unlikely social state

Before Pure Michigan, my perception of the pleasant peninsula began and ended with Michael Moore’s 1989 documentary, Roger & Me. I will never forget the anti-social treatment Moore received from Roger Smith, then CEO of General Motors ("the company that destroyed Flint"), nor will I the poor woman who raised rabbits in her back yard to put food on her dinner table. Nor her boarded-up neighborhood. It was a striking portrait of a desperate place, with a decaying community, and the stranglehold on the people who failed to escape before the state's economic Armageddon.

This perception has been reinforced over the last five years by the number of people trying to flee Michigan who’ve applied for jobs at Wanderlust. The recent government bailout of Detroit’s auto industry and the disappearance of several Michigan-based iconic US auto brands haven’t helped.

Desperate measures for desperate times?

First launched in 2005, the momentum for Pure Michigan has been steadily building. Then came the “economic downturn”. Just about the time things couldn’t have looked worse in Michigan, with the great recession of ’08-’09 fully underway and the auto industry down for the count, something wonderful happened:

Governor Jennifer M. Granholm's economic stimulus program included $30 Million to support the Pure Michigan campaign in 2009.

The entire plan included both in-state and out of state programs, traditional media, a website and online advertising. $10 million of those dollars went for a brand new, very inspirational, Hal Riney-esque coast-to-coast cable advertising campaign directing people to the Pure Michigan website.

At the top of the website, social media bookmarking tools and links to Pure Michigan’s accounts on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. They’ve got a very active blog, an email newsletter, a photo contest, and a place where visitors can share their Michigan travel experiences for others to see. All in all, it’s the type of well thought-out, highly-integrated, content-rich, on- and offline strategic philosophy we advocate here at Wanderlust.

Considering Michigan’s timing (when most destination marketers were slashing budgets, hankering down hoping to survive the storm), it took a considerable amount of courage to pull off. The fact that the governor got behind it with record level funding is as admirable as it is visionary.

But is it working?

20,000 Facebook fans is a lot for a tourism office to attract. But does a social following justify $30 Million spent by a desperate state in a terrible economy? Official reports suggest the answer to be a resounding yes. $1.1 Billion in new tourism revenue is being attributed to the campaign. While the state’s next year’s budget will see severe cuts across the board, it appears that the Pure Michigan campaign may escape the knife.

I asked our production manager, Lynn White, what she thought of the Pure Michigan campaign. Lynn was born and raised in Michigan, having escaped many years ago, vowing never to return.

“You know,” she reminisced, “I had forgotten how beautiful it is North of Flint. Maybe someday soon I’ll take my kids there.”

I suspect others are thinking the same thing, too.