Santa Barbara is hoping the Cimarron Group the entertainment marketing firm behind the successful celebrity-driven “See My LA” tourism campaign can bring more visitors to the Central Coast.
Cimarron took over the high-profile L.A. Inc.’s campaign to hype L.A. tourism that was visible on posters, billboards and in airports in 2004. It helped generate an estimated $64 million in convention business last year.
But will Cimarron’s big-time blitz translate into tourism success for Santa Barbara, a decidedly smaller and sleepier beach city?
The company, which boasted revenues of about $30 million in 2002, has designed posters, previews, and teasers for hundreds of Hollywood movies including “American Beauty” and “Lord of the Rings,” as well as print campaigns for Lexus, Universal Studios Hollywood and the Desert Inn.
Cimarron’s Mike Tankel, director of marketing innovation, and Santa Barbara account manager Gregg Rosenzweig played down the differences between the agency’s Tinseltown roots and Santa Barbara’s needs.
“There are a lot of similarities between movie marketing and this kind of destination campaign. When you are promoting a movie, it takes you away for a few hours and recharges you,” Tankel said. “A trip to Santa Barbara can take you away for a couple days to reactivate.”
The concept for the Santa Barbara campaign is “The American Riviera,” a phrase coined by the Santa Barbara Convention and Visitors Bureau several years ago.
“We had trademarked the phrase but had a challenge in trying to communicate what that means to the visitor,” said Donna Mulgrew, vice president of sales for the Santa Barbara Visitors Bureau. “Travel for relaxation is on the rise, and we wanted to capture and promote that as part of the campaign.”
The city attracts about 10.5 million visitors a year and they spend an estimated $1.5 billion in the county. One Santa Barbara goal is to capitalize on the slower pace of life by marketing the variety of local activities, including beach and sea, art, wine and film elements.
“It’s tricky,” said Rosenzwieg. “The co-op is a wide range of companies and businesses so we have to be careful not to focus too much on any particular group.”
The idea is to draw to repeat visitors and tourists of a more local variety typically other Californians who can drive or take the train to Santa Barbara for a weekend.
The bureau’s total budget for the campaign is about $1.7 million, $1.2 million of which comes from the city, with the rest being made up by the county, and contributions from members.
“I think the biggest challenge you see with a city like Santa Barbara is maintaining its integrity and not playing it like a fast-paced retail world, which means not bombarding people and the local population with huge outdoor boards, blaring music and things like that, which are the antithesis of their lifestyle,” Tankel said.
About 70 percent of the campaign is geared toward the Internet, especially as online travel booking continues to increase; the rest is print.
Bringing tourists to Santa Barbara shouldn’t be that hard, Cimarron reps maintain.
“Who wouldn’t love going to Santa Barbara?” asked Tankel. “We were looking at sand and the ocean from the room where we made our presentation.”
