May through August is peak travel season in America. And many families choose to pack up their car and take long cross-country road trips. The state of Tennessee wanted to attract travellers, but research showed they were unsure of how Tennessee was relevant to them, and in turn, saw a “drive through” state and not a final vacation destination.

So we created the One Minute Vacation.

Hyper-targeted video banners that invited moms to take a minute-long road trip from their home to the Tennessee attractions she would be most interested in. Essentially giving the opportunity to go on their family vacation before ever even booking it.

We started by mapping out 24 actual road trips from nearby markets to some of Tennessee’s biggest attractions. Then we turned each one into a minute-long vacation served up in a video banner ad.

Because banner ads are easily ignored, we aimed to initially capture mom’s attention by showing her something familiar. So the videos featured the exact roads she’d take from her location to the destinations on screen.

To further personalize the experience, we only showed her Tennessee attractions we knew she’d be interested in. To achieve this, we targeted the content using geographical, behavioural and social data. So if she had ever checked in at a theme park, or tweeted about rock climbing, she would see the related video.

From the banner ads she could then visit a microsite that recognized the exact video she had viewed and provided more detailed information on the featured attractions, as well as others she could visit on that specific road trip.

By creating content that was both relevant and personal to our target audience, we were able to turn one of the most ignored, ineffective advertising mediums, the banner ad, into a highly-effective point of engagement. As a result, the campaign generated more than 970,000 completed video views with a completion rate 10-20% higher that industry average, and increased vacation consideration to Tennessee by 56%. Tennessee saw a 6.28% increase in leisure person-stays following the campaign and had a record year for economic impact on tourism, generating an additional $ 1 billion dollars over the previous year.