MAXIMIZE YOUR PROJECT’S POTENTIAL

The explosion of media and new technologies has created new opportunities for savvy marketing directors. You can increase sales and leverage the cost of a photo or video shoot by using the material in a variety of media.

Digital media provides more applications for your promotional material than ever before. Photos are not just for print, video is not just for television. Whether pictures, video or audio, once they’re in digital form, they’re all the same to a computer.

Equally, the number of media outlets are exploding, splintering readers and audiences into smaller niches. Cross promotion and multi media application of your promotional material is a necessity.

Ideally, all of your advertising and promotions are integrated. Your video reflects your brochure. Your brochure promotes your video and your website. Your website supports your brochure and extends the reach of your video. And your website is promoted in your advertising.

Why? Get a prospective customer to view a message in different media and you’ll benefit greatly. Studies suggest that if a message is presented in a variety of media environments, it will maintain the prospect’s interest over a longer time than if it were continually repeated in a single medium. Equally, consumers more readily learn and retain the content of the message if it comes to them via different channels.

The mix of media also addresses two maxims of direct marketing. The longer you keep a prospect’s attention on the product’s benefits, the greater the chance they’ll become a customer. Secondly, the more customer cynicism becomes a cultural norm, the more information a prospect will demand before making a purchase decision.

The key is making sure your all your marketing efforts are aligned. Each should reflect a consistent theme and vision.

Communicate with your production company, photographer, web designer and advertising agency. And have them communicate with each other to ensure the compatibility and adaptability of their finished products. Or better, yet, hire a company that does it all.

Determine before you shoot, how you’ll use the material. Each application can have special requirements. Video streamed on the Internet needs to be shot tighter with more close-ups in order to have the same visual impact as the video shot for television. If the web designer wants to cut out specific elements from the photos, the photographer has to shoot against clean backgrounds.

High quality photos and video give you more options and they can often pay for themselves several times over.

Are any of your photos post card material? On the Internet, viral marketing is free publicity -- the cyber equivalent of word of mouth -- the best kind of advertising there is. How often do you see sites that enable surfers to send virtual post cards of the property?

Do you like a particular shot from your video? It’s possible to put still captures from it up on your website.

The applications for video are incredibly diverse. Beyond its use as a sales tool, videos often function as in-room introduction to the hotel’s facilities. Some chains even cross-sell other properties on their in-room channels.

Local convention and visitors’ bureaus and state tourism boards regularly use footage from local properties for their marketing efforts. Tour and travel providers such as airlines will incorporate outside material in their promotional videos.

Why stop there? If the material’s distinctive, if it’s compelling, seed the media with it. Footage from a film we produced for the Boca Raton Hotel and Club appeared on Good Morning America, syndicated television shows and local newscasts.

The possibilities will only continue to grow as more homes get broadband and the number of television channels expand.

The ultimate example of successfully re-using hotel video footage belongs to Frenchman’s Reef in St. Thomas. From their sales video, we cut a television commercial and put together a compilation of select footage. We gave copies of the footage to tour and travel providers, commercial producers and television networks Shots taken right from the resort’s video soon wound up in Liberty Travel, AT&T and Burdines commercials. The big score: Turner Network Broadcasting used a shot as the centerpiece of their fall football promotion. Every day, several times a day for a month, Frenchman’s Reef got free national exposure worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The winner of the promotion got a trip to the Caribbean, but the trip wasn’t to St. Thomas much less Frenchman’s Reef. The producers at Turner simply used the shot to represent the Caribbean itself.

The shot wasn’t something generic like a couple walking on the beach. It was an aerial of the hotel and its beachfront.

Generic shots don’t help promote your property. Whatever you release must be distinctive.

Photography, video, print and websites can be your signature. Sign it with a flourish.

Article by Judson Bibb of Bibb Productions, (www.bibbproductions.com). Judson is a writer, director, editor with over 30 years of experience in the travel and resort business.

This article may be republished in its entirety. It must include the link to my e-mail address, (judson@bibbproductions.com) and the Bibb Productions URL, (www.bibbproductions.com).