Elephants on Bicycles

Last night Experience Columbus invited bloggers out to get a sneak peak of the new marketing campaign to draw in conventions, business travellers and weekenders within a 3 hour radius. The EC team has been working hard lately to reach out to the online community and this was another step in that direction. Over the past few weeks most of the EC staff has been twittering away and over the past couple of months we’ve seen a few of them in and out of the Columbus Social Media Cafe meetups.

The new marketing campaign centers around the idea that, of the obvious things that you can’t see in Columbus (eg the Eiffel Tower, English Channel, etc.), there are a lot of really great things you can see and do in Columbus. The campaign includes some viral aspect videos on YouTube, a comedy site, the traditional banner ads and of course print ads. We were given a preview of all of these and the opportunity to provide feedback. There was a mixed reaction to the plans but I believe overall the plan is pretty solid and a pleasant departure from the much more “safe” ad campaigns of the past. Hopefully I’m not just biased by the fact that the evening started off with free Jeni’s ice cream. I compiled some video I took on my point/shoot that you can watch here of the precedings. It’s just raw without any editting (really I don’t think editting would’ve helped much anyway):

Experience Columbus Blogger Meetup from Andrew Miller on Vimeo.

All in all it was a really nice time. The Experience Columbus visitor center is top notch, definitely on par with any other city visitor center I’ve seen. Hopefully this campaign will help to bring more conventions and meetings to Columbus along with the near in weekend traveller. Tina and Sophie had a great time to boot! I want to thank Daniel of Skreened as well for the sweet shirts.