Thursday, May. 15, 2008

Travelers get message from MB: 'Over here'

Sept. 25, 2007 | If you were vacationing in Myrtle Beach, you'd be here by now, taunt billboards on Interstate 95 in South Carolina.

The ads are targeting travelers passing by Myrtle Beach on their way to Florida, but is anybody paying attention?

That's what the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce is trying to figure out as it searches for the best way to pull new visitors to the Grand Strand.

"In some respects, we were targeting the parents who were absolutely tired of hearing, 'Are we there yet?' from the kids in the backseats," chamber Chief Executive Brad Dean wrote in an e-mail.

Thanks to an influx of state funds, the chamber is using its plush budget to experiment a little, using billboards for the first time since it bought ads in Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C., in the 1990s. The 2007 campaign includes 20 billboards - 16 on the southbound side of I-95 and four on the northbound side - and will cost $225,000 in private funds, Dean said.

Whether to keep them up for another year is the big question.

It is difficult to track the effectiveness of billboards, though a small survey showed people remembered the ads, Dean said.

The chamber can figure out how many people TV and other advertising bring in by using devices such as different phone numbers for each ad.

"[But] few people plan a vacation while they are traveling down the highway," Dean wrote. "Nevertheless, we desperately need to grow our tourism base, and the key for the Grand Strand is to attract new, first-time visitors."

With an all-time high of 90,000 rooms along the Grand Strand, hoteliers are looking for new customers to book rooms alongside annual vacationers.

About 95 percent of Grand Strand visitors drive here, and 70 percent of those use I-95. Yet for every one of those visitors, three or four drive right past Myrtle Beach.

The billboards were created with two main themes: the first, a traditional Myrtle Beach plug, depicting local attractions and the beach; the second aimed at people heading elsewhere.

The ads list the distance to other popular destinations in Florida - Daytona, Orlando and Miami - and then say, Myrtle Beach, next exit. That's 618 more miles to Miami versus 70 miles to Myrtle Beach.

In your face, Florida.

"It was just kind of a fun way to say, 'Hey, we're right here, we're closer and we're just as much fun,'" said Scott Brandon, president of Brandon Advertising, the firm that created the ads. "You're really just trying to get in somebody's heads and occupy our brains."

Billboards are a good way to do that, said Jeff Ranta, a public relations and advertising instructor at the University of South Carolina.

Ranta said he would suggest keeping the ads, along with advertising in other media.

"It's incumbent to have some sort of presence on the major thoroughfares," said Ranta, who also is a partner in Columbia advertising agency Mustard N' Relish.

Brandon Advertising, one of two agencies that work for the chamber, conducted 172 surveys at the Santee Welcome Center between Aug. 31 and Sept. 2. Most remembered the green mileage billboards.

"It's pretty clear that people enjoyed seeing the attractive shots of the destination, but the message that resonated the most was that the Myrtle Beach area is a much shorter drive than other popular destinations," Dean wrote.

The decision of whether to keep them up should be made within two months, Brandon said.

Survey results The Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce surveyed 172 people at an S.C. welcome center on I-95: