Missouri’s very own Negro League Baseball Museum is going into its third decade of existence.
To commemorate the achievements of this institution and those who are enshrined within, the state of Missouri asked Hoffman | Lewis to place an ad in the 20th Anniversary museum program.
A simple, thoughtful tip of the cap was created. But there was a chance to do more. With a few conventions coming to Kansas City in the coming months, a collector’s set of three posters was produced to tout this one-of-a-kind gem to visitors from out-of-state.
New Missouri tourism campaign takes road trip to Humorville.
When you start with a line like, “Don’t take less of a vacation, take a vacation for less in Missouri,” you’re bound to get dads pulling kids on skis behind lawn tractors and couples taking a spa day at the local public fountain, right? No? Okay, let’s back up.
Fact #1: Hilarity is not a natural byproduct of extensive research and focus group testing. Fact #2: Tourism ads must consist of wall-to-wall destination shots. Fact #3: Don’t trust facts.
Going into this campaign, team H/L delved deep into research, finding that although the recession had impacted traveler motivations, 70% of them still expected to take a vacation and that value was a top driver for making travel decisions. Armed with this knowledge, several different concepts were created, four of which went into testing. As the process unfolded, it became clear that not only was a value message important, but that humor more effectively drew people in and broke through the clutter.
So let’s recap… By following all the rules of conventional tourism marketing, we created a campaign that breaks all the rules of conventional tourism marketing. Funny how that works out. Enjoy.
It all started back when a few H|Lers clocked in at various metro-area McDonald’s restaurants. That’s where the seed of an idea was planted. Since then, it has grown considerably, gone through multiple rounds of revisions, secured approvals, found a director and, finally, appeared on TV and radio.
The idea? Well, it’s all about the serve button.
For those unfamiliar with the serve button, there’s a timer that starts as soon as an order is placed at McDonald’s, and once the order is served to the customer, the crewperson hits the serve button. Der.
Now that that’s out of the way, the serve button is important because it helps track how quickly customers get through the line. The shorter the line, the more people will pull into the parking lot.
So, as you can understand (and as reinforced by the FFL), McDonald’s would like to serve as many customers as possible as quickly as possible.
Great. McDonald’s wants more customers. But, how is that relevant to a customer? Good question. Here to answer are these handy-dandy commercials: