The Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board is stepping up and into the 21st century with a new deal to air its latest marketing campaign on Santa Monica streaming service Hulu.
The campaign, set to roll out in March, is a continuation of the board’s “Everyone Is Welcome” campaign launched in the wake of the 2016 presidential election and intended to reassure international visitors who might be frightened by what some international countries see as unwelcoming political rhetoric coming from President Donald Trump’s administration.
The overall social and traditional media strategy includes a 30-second film that will play on Hulu and Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube; 10-second commercials on both Facebook Inc.’s main social platform and its Instagram subsidiary; display and banner ads at websites in the United States, Mexico City and China; and billboards in New York.
The ads build visually and thematically on last year’s “Everyone Is Welcome” YouTube commercial, which shows people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds interacting with a paper airplane as it travels through different neighborhoods in Los Angeles.
Hulu will air the new commercial before episodes of its original series “Runaways,” which is based on a Marvel Comics series of the same name and follows a crew of teenage misfits in Los Angeles who band together against a common enemy. The streaming services company will also show clips of the show’s actors talking about why they feel everyone is welcome in Los Angeles.
A study by market research firm ORC International Inc. showed that the tourism board’s commercial last year was well received in Mexico as well as other places, according to the board.
“Our ‘Everyone is Welcome’ campaign was the right message at the right time; it was a message of humanity and encouraged people around the globe to see the diversity of L.A.’s faces and places,” said Ernest Wooden, Jr., chief executive of the tourism board, in a statement issued in January when it announced last year’s visitor numbers.
Still, the number of visitors from the Middle East and Mexico dipped, in spite of an overall record of more than 48 million L.A. County guests in 2017.
Mexican visitor numbers, historically the largest international group of visitors to the county, fell 2.8 percent to 1.7 million last year.
– Caroline Anderson
