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The First Visitor Study That Everyone Fell in Love with – "Virginia is for Lovers" Ad SloganClient: Virginia Tourism Corporation SIR conducted Virginia's first ever out-of-state visitor study, and everyone fell in love with the results. From a series of telephone surveys and in-person, one-on-one intercepts at Welcome Centers, SIR discovered that the demographics of the Virginia visitor were older and more affluent than the average U.S. pleasure traveler. The older, more affluent market segment, while lucrative in terms of vacation-related expenditures per trip, represented a relatively small segment of the overall U.S. population. SIR suggested that the much larger opportunity segment was young people with more modest means. While their total spending per trip did not match the dollars of "current" Virginia visitors, the potential total expenditures from this larger group was, in fact, significantly promising. The issue was how to best position Virginia as a travel destination to appeal to this younger segment. SIR's research suggested this younger audience perceived Virginia as a place frozen in time -- a place they might have only known about from history books. A fresh, new advertising campaign was needed to repackage the Commonwealth as a more exciting, fun, emotionally rewarding destination that would be more relevant to young families. With this knowledge, the Commonwealth's advertising agency created a new campaign with the slogan "Virginia is for Lovers." Decades later, this is still the signature line for Commonwealth's tourism efforts and perhaps one of the most memorable in the history of destination marketing. |
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