The Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel Receives Florida’s Top Tourism Marketing Awards

LEE COUNTY, Fla. – The Lee County Visitor & Convention Bureau (VCB) earned eight Flagler Awards, including four prestigious first-place Henry awards, Tuesday (Nov. 19) at the Florida Tourism Forum at the Sheraton Panama City Beach Golf & Spa Resort.

This year, the VCB earned the following awards:

• Henry award: “Island Hopper Songwriter Fest Mobile App” in the Mobile Marketing category
• Henry award: “Digital Transit Posters” in the Out-of-Home category
• Henry award: “Meeting planners magazine ads” in the Print Advertising category
• Henry award: “World record Largest Seashell” campaign in the Special Event category
• Silver award: “Beach Babble” in the Creative Radio Advertising category
• Bronze award: “Fort Myers Tip-Off” in the Television Commercial category
• Bronze award: “Brew Trail map” in the campaign in the Resource/Promotional Material-Consumer category
• Bronze award: “Vacation emails” in the Direct Marketing category

The Flagler Awards program, sponsored by VISIT FLORIDA, the official tourism marketing organization for the state, and the Florida Commission on Tourism, recognizes outstanding tourism marketing in Florida. Every year, the Flagler Awards honor many individuals and organizations that help maintain and improve Florida’s position as one of the world’s most popular travel destinations. The awards are open to all individuals, private businesses and not-for-profit organizations offering a product or service that promotes tourism to or within Florida.

A panel of out-of-state judges, who evaluated the creativity, innovation, production, quality and effectiveness of each entry determined the winning entries. Based on the judges’ cumulative scores, awards were presented to the top three entries in each category: the Bronze Award for the third highest scoring entry, the Silver Award for the second highest scoring entry, and the Henry Award for the highest scoring entry in each of the 17 categories.

Additional information:

Highlights of the awarded marketing campaigns for The Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel include:

Henry

Mobile Marketing: Island Hopper Songwriter Fest App – a customized  app created to deliver a personalized experience, share timely information, offer deals from hotels & local businesses, drive ticket sales for special experiences and maximize sponsorship value.

Out-of-Home Advertising: Winter Transit – digital out-of-home panels using captivating, high-impact drone imagery placed in high transit areas of New York, Boston, Minneapolis to demonstrate red tide event had diminished and inspire visitors to book trips for 2019.

Print Advertising:  Meetings Campaign – a series of print ads placed in top-tier meeting publications positioning The Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel to meetings planners nationwide as an innovation-inspiring destination.

Special Event: National Seashell Day Guinness World Record – a community-driven activation held on June 21 to “shellebrate” National Seashell Day. We shattered the Guinness World Record for the largest human image of seashell on Fort Myers Beach.

Silver

Radio Advertising – Two 30-sec radio commercials, called “Beach Babble” that helped drive summer visitation by using use humor to grab attention, differentiate the brand, increase recall and inspire action.

Bronze

Direct Marketing – Vacation date email campaign – the email campaign was a three-part series providing timely, useful and inspirational information to individuals planning to visit the destination in the near feature.

Resource/Promotional Material – Consumer: Brew Trail Map – a brew trail map featuring craft breweries and distilleries in Southwest Florida region.

Television Advertising – Fort Myers Tip-Off – a 30-second broadcast spot designed to reach beach lovers and vacation seekers who also were college basketball fans, players and supporters of the Fort Myers Tip-Off teams living within the United States.

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