Tracy Lanza, senior vice president of integrated marketing for Brand USA, the public-private partnership responsible for launching the United States' first nationally coordinated tourism marketing effort, spoke to IAAPA News Hub just prior to IAAPA Virtual Conference that took place April 7-8, 2021. Lanza shares the importance of marketing and content creation when creating organizational messaging that inspire a return to travel.
IAAPA News Hub: With changes brought with the pandemic, how did your strategies at Brand USA have to shift?
Tracy Lanza: Interestingly enough, our major consumer strategy didn’t shift. We continue to take a “Many Voices” approach to our USA campaigns, and messaging focused on possibility, proximity, and welcome are as important as ever. Diverse storytelling is something we’re laser-focused on, and we’ve continued to tell inspiring travel narratives to our audience since the earliest days of the pandemic. We did, however, temporarily pause paid media, and have instead been engaging organically with our global consumer audiences through our owned and earned channels. We’ll resume paid media based on a list of gating criteria that help us understand when the time will be right to begin country-specific marketing investment.
IAAPA News Hub: What recommendations can you give those working at attractions or as suppliers on how to make decisions based on data?
TL: Measurement, insight, and understanding best practices are critical to smart marketing. We focus on key performance indicators that are continually refined as marketing platforms and tactics evolve, to make sure we’ve established appropriate benchmarks, can track performance accordingly, and optimize our plans based on results. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by data – but we establish clear objectives and goals upfront to avoid “analysis paralysis.”
IAAPA News Hub: How did you keep consumers engaged with your content while they were at home? Give us 3 tips on what makes engaging content?
TL: It’s no surprise that engaging content is often entertaining content, and entertaining content is sensory. Great content might be a feast for the eyes, humorous, or heart-breaking, there’s lots of ways of entertaining viewers - but most of all great content should trigger an emotion, because emotions work in our brains to encode memory. This is true for written articles, print executions, but especially for video. During the pandemic, we focused on our streaming video platform – GoUSA TV – to tell engaging, inspirational, and emotional stories about travel in the USA. This approach to content was especially useful while people all over the world dreamt about travel while they were stuck at home during the pandemic. While video is one of the top media for getting your message out, audio has been coming on strong with the popularity of podcasts and new entries like Clubhouse. At Brand USA we are always interested in trying out new innovations to learn better ways of reaching our audience and keep our messaging fresh.
IAAPA News Hub: In looking ahead, what do you see as important steps in the path forward?
TL: First and foremost, we listen to health officials and share updates on our websites, in webinars, and other messaging, to make sure travelers have the information they need to plan an international trip to the USA. Building consumer confidence and demonstrating that our destinations, attractions, and businesses are safe places to visit is critical. Once Americans are safely traveling again, then we can begin to welcome our international friends and families back to the USA.
