Weekend Reading – Fun Tourism Ads, Sponsored Content and Crappy Slogans

Looking for a way to pass the time this weekend? We’ve scanned the web and created a list of some of our most interesting content finds. Today we’ll look at fun tourism ads, sponsored content for brands and a great way to create a crappy slogan for your brand… if that’s what you’re into…

High Fives for Fun Tourism Ads!

We do a lot of work in the tourism space, so it’s fun for us when fellow tourism marketers steal the spotlight. There have been a couple of pretty cool tourism marketing ads making the rounds in recent weeks.

Read #1 – Making a Bad Review Into Something Fun

I love reviews. I love reading them, examining their structure, learning more about their authors and seeing how brands react to them. What would you do if you came across a bad review of your business? Snowbird Ski Resort took one of their bad reviews and turned it into an ad. And it’s awesome!

Read #2 – Goin’ to Winnipeg Isn’t Always a Bad Thing… 

If I gave my kids the option of a Disney vacation or a trip to Winnipeg, I’m guessing they’d opt for Mickey Mouse and the gang. Tourism Winnipeg is riding the viral wave after a video emerged of two kids from Calgary getting very upset at their parents after they were told their “trip to Winnipeg” was an elaborate front for a surprise trip to Disney World. The poor kids just wanted to go to Winnipeg…

Kudos to the Tourism Winnipeg team for helping to make the video famous. They’re reaping the rewards right now – the video has over 250 000 views on their Facebook page, and the story has been picked up by numerous media outlets.

Brands and Sponsored Content

Our content team had a good discussion about sponsored content the other day. If you were a small business with no money for content, would you consider partnering with other businesses and allowing them to sponsor content on your website? Some of the “traditional” sponsored content that we see is just gross link bait with little value for the user… but what if you could provide quality content to your audience that was laced with subtle sponsored mentions?

Read #3 – The Seahawks Make Pancakes

This isn’t really a “read”… it’s more of a “look”. Check out how the Seattle Seahawks and IHOP got together to create a cool piece of branded content. The Seahawks got a fun piece to share on their social media, and IHOP got to leverage the Seahawks and get their name in front of a new audience. Looks like a win-win to me.

How could this idea work for you? Let’s say you’re in charge of marketing a region want to create some cool itineraries that visitors can use while traveling through the region. Let’s also say that you have no money. What if you could team up with a local tire shop and get them to pay for your writer in exchange for a mention in the article and a co-branded social media share? Here’s an example that our writer Jibril was a part of in conjunction with Vice and New Amsterdam Vodka. Vice gets content, New Amsterdam Vodka gets a few mentions in a piece designed for their target audience, and the user gets a quality piece of content to consume. Interesting…

Need a Slogan For Your Business?

If you’ve ever started a business or have been a part of a branding session, you’ve probably had to come up with a slogan. The recent trend (especially in the tech and marketing fields) is to mash a bunch of buzzwords together to create a statement that shows people that you’re really good at using catchy words.

Read #4 – Crappy Slogan Generator

Fear not… your slogan problems have been solved! Just slap your company name into the generator and watch the magic happen.

Ever wonder what we do at Strong Coffee? Glad you asked…

Strong Coffee Marketing is the industry leader in ubiquitous models. Our technology takes the best features of WAP and Unix. Our feature set is unmatched in the industry, but our open-source synergies and easy configuration is constantly considered an amazing achievement. Think turn-key. Think cross-platform. Think vertical, 1000/60/60/24/7/365, bleeding-edge.

There you have it… some light reading for the weekend! Enjoy!