Experience Kissimmee x @ whimsic_al
Experience Kissimmee, the tourism authority for Osceola County, Florida, is always looking for new ways to market to its domestic and international audiences across the world. Lucky for this brand, the power of social media is quite useful. Experience Kissimmee often invites influencers and media from across the globe to experience the destination and its more than 900 large and small industry partners — to then head home and share their experience with their audience, whether it be digital, print, social, or all of the above.
The Central Florida destination marketing organization (DMO) often focuses on influencers and media from its target markets. However, in the last year, Experience Kissimmee has taken a new approach to its marketing: showing locals what the destination offers, right in their own backyard. The campaign titled, “Home to Stay. Places to Play.” shares just that. Amazing memories to be made in Central Florida.
Experience Kissimmee welcomed two different local influencers to promote this campaign in summer 2021 — one being a woman and her celebrity husband, the other a family consisting of a mom, dad, and their three sons.
While travel reports show an uptick in domestic travel, many are hesitant to travel once again; now due to the delta variant of the coronavirus. Should the “Home to Stay. Places to Play.” campaign resume, Allie Richmond (Instagram: @ whimsic_al) and her family would be the perfect family to show locals what fun they can have in Kissimmee and nearby areas. No packing, no airport, no airplane. Just family, friends, and the Florida sunshine.
Allie is a wife to her husband, Steve, who is a cast member at Walt Disney World Resort. Together they have four daughters — pre-school aged triplets, and one who is 2 years old. From matching outfits to their love for the theme parks, they are an ideal family to showcase Central Florida fun. (Especially during the fall and winter seasons!)
The Richmond Family is a great candidate to show off Kissimmee’s accommodations — focusing on the destination’s 50,000 vacation homes of its 70,000 accommodations. Rather than a cramped hotel room, the vacation home product ranges from two-bedroom condos to 15-bedroom luxury mega mansions. Many homes are themed to favored themes — such as princesses, the girls’ favorite — and offer many of the same amenities a resort hotel would offer.
The Richmond Family can show what it’s like to stay in the privacy and comfort of a vacation home with four young children. They also have the potential to invite Allie’s parents to highlight a multi-generational stay — something Kissimmee focused on heavily with its United Kingdom market, prior to the pandemic and closure of international borders.
In addition, Allie and her family could experience an itinerary of activities — ranging from exciting dinner shows such as Medieval Times, to winter events at Disney’s Magic Kingdom. The Richmond Family can show the ease of navigating Kissimmee with four children under 5 years old.
On her personal Instagram account, Allie has 166,000 followers with a high engagement rate of 4.74 percent. This engagement is ideal for showcasing a travel destination that her audience could one day visit themselves.
The hashtags for this campaign are #KissimmeeLocal and Experience Kissimmee’s year-round hashtag #MyKissimmee — but Allie has the power to create her own hashtag for this experience.
Experience Kissimmee and its hosting partners would comp all the expenses including the vacation home, meals, and activities; and compensate Allie per post, negotiated prior to her arrival. The posts would include a minimum of one carousel post of the vacation homes, one carousel post per activity, a minimum of 15 total story slides (at least one with a swipe up link to the Kissimmee Local Campaign page, experiencekissimmee.com/local), and a Kissimmee highlight through Dec. 31, 2021.
Following Allie’s visit, she will be expected to share the statistics of her posts — including total number of likes, comments, sends, saves, and swipes up.
REFERENCES
Experience Kissimmee. (2021, April 20). Explore at Home. https://www.experiencekissimmee.com/local
Experience Kissimmee. (2021b, July 1). Itinerary: 36 Hours of Family Fun in Kissimmee, Florida. https://www.experiencekissimmee.com/blog/itinerary-36-hours-family-fun-kissimmee-florida
Instagram, whimsic_al. (2021) https://instagram.com/whimsic_al
