Tourism Opp: Louisiana Office of Tourism extends AOR partnership

The Louisiana Office of Tourism (LOT) extended its relationship with creative AOR Trumpet Advertising until 2024. The agency was able to retain the account because it has increased visitation and revenue every year it has worked with LOT. It originally tapped Trumpet in 2011. Tourism is a major industry in LA and was devastated last year due to the coronavirus pandemic. I predict we will see a campaign in the near future to convince travelers to visit the state as travel restrictions are lifted. 

According to Pathmatics, LOT earned 38.6m impressions YTD through desktop video ads (87%), Facebook ads (10%), desktop display ads (3%) and mobile display ads (1%). It placed the majority (94%) of these ads site direct onto sites such as wattpad.com, facebook.com, yahoo.com, fandom.com and seattlepi.com. It placed the remainder (6%) through a variety of indirect channels onto sites such as yahoo.com, fandom.com, wattpad.com, finance.yahoo.com and sporcle.com. It spent around $668.5k on digital display ads YTD, a drastic increase from $231.9k spent in this channel during the same time period of 2020. Full-year spend increased slightly (65) from $616k in 2019 to $655.7k in 2020. 

Per iSpot, LOT has not invested in national TV ads since spending around $230.7k in 2019. It placed ads during programming such as "College Football," "Major League Rugby," "Horse Racing," "Blancpain GT World Challenge" "British Touring Car Championship." 

Sellers-- LOT has been increasing digital spend, and seems to have abandoned national TV ads. This means it may be targeting a younger audience, or could just receive a better ROI through digital ads. The organization will likely continue increasing spend to make up for a down year in 2020 that was cause by the coronavirus pandemic. I recommend reaching out offering primarily digital ad space. 

Agency & martech readers-- In addition to creative AOR Trumpet Advertising, I believe LOT works with Morgan + Company on media buying & planing and The Ehrhardt Group on PR. Consider reaching out in case it reviews its PR or media accounts. Trumpet has creative locked down until 2024. LOT seems to prefer working with agencies based in LA, so those that are located near its headquarters will likely have more success.