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.