Chicago Joe does Entertainment!

What does everyone think of Chicago Joe’s latest video – ‘Entertainment’? As you can see, Joe is really getting into the swing of things now, and he’s ready to tell you all about the best sights, shows and spectacles in the Windy City.

Have a watch, and tell your friends, especially if they are travel agents! And be a fan on Facebook and follow Joe on Twitter! See ya!

Inspiring Travel Agents

At the Chicago and Illinois stand at World Travel Market, agents had the chance to meet Chicago Joe – the face of a new interactive social media training concept.

Newly launched at the show, this innovative training concept concentrates on utlilising the growth of social media and the internet by providing agents with new and interesting ways to learn about the city.

Chicago Joe is a destination personality – bringing Chicago to life. He will communicate with agents via a dedicated homepage – www.gochicago.com/joe, podcasts, Facebook, and training videos on YouTube and DVD.

Competitions will initially provide incentive for agents to communicate with Joe, with viral and word of mouth marketing continuing to spread the message. The campaign was launched with a series of teaser adverts in Travel Weekly.

So – if you know any travel agents, tell them all about it! Chicago Joe would love to meet them!

“I certainly haven’t seen anything like this before. It is a great way to encourage agents to have a bit of fun and learn at the same time. What with the economy and the industry the way it currently is, Joe is a great form of keeping agents busy and helping them learn how and why they should be pushing the destination.”
Fiona Robbins, Funway Holidays

“Joe is unique and will appeal to our agents as we try and have fun with training as it usually means the information is absorbed better than by traditional sessions. I like the fact Joe talks about his own personal experiences as this is something customers appreciate when they are booking, so any help and information we can give them will help our agents clinch sales.”
Vicki Brewer, Lotus Group

UK Trade Fam to Chicago

McCluskey International was proud to organise and participate in a St Patrick’s Weekend FAM trip to Chicago, where four key product staff from leading UK operators were introduced to the Windy City. The UK group included representation from Virgin Holidays, Lotus Group, Lastminute.com and Funway Holidays.

The sun was shining and the river was luminous green as we arrived at the Westin River North, our base for the next four days. The celebration of all things Irish was in full swing as we were whisked out for a delicious Italian family-style dinner at Buca di Beppo.

The trip highlighted all the fantastic new and exciting things to see and do in Chicago, such as Greeter Tours, double decker bus touring, hotel site inspections and a view 1,127 feet above Michigan Avenue atop the Hancock Building. We strolled past President Obama’s family home, laughed until our faces hurt at the improvisation theatre at Second City and nodded along to some of the best live Jazz and Blues music we’d ever heard at Blue Chicago.

The group was mesmerised by the beautiful architecture and sculpture in the city such as Cloud Gate at Millennium Park and we also got a sneak preview of the new Modern Wing at the Art Institute which is going to be fantastic when it opens in May.

The saying goes, ‘you never leave Chicago hungry’ and this certainly rang true for our trip! We enjoyed some of Chicago’s finest deep dish pizza pie at Pizzeria Ora and divine steak and seafood at Shula’s Steak House. This was in between sampling authentic Chicago hot dogs and Garrett’s Popcorn, of course!

The trip was planned to inform and educate some of the UK’s key tour operators on just how much there is to see and do in Chicago and how rapidly the city is growing and developing. It has morphed into a dynamic and world-class destination, with top notch shopping, dining and entertainment. With 29 miles of golden sand beach fringing the city and myriad free festivals and celebrations year-round, Chicago is a four season city just waiting to welcome you and your clients.

Record-breaking Ontario Campaign

McCluskey International has been responsible for the UK advertising for Ontario Tourism since 2004.  For Spring 2008, we developed an umbrella campaign for Ontario and its two main cities, Toronto and Ottowa.

Ontario is home to some of Canada’s most iconic and popular destinations – Canada’s largest and most cosmopolitan city, Toronto; the nation’s captivating capital, Ottawa; and the thundering natural wonder that is the world-renowned Niagara Falls.

Our brief was to increase awareness and touring sales to Ontario as well as short city breaks to Toronto and Ottawa. This created three distinct target markets: 40-65 year olds with a high income looking for an experiential trip of a lifetime to Ontario; 40-65 year olds looking for a city break with culture and heritage in Ottawa; and younger, trendier females looking for a city break with designer shops, great nightlife and cool culture in the city of Toronto.

A striking campaign was developed with the tagline “Get Into Ontario”. This encompassed the three different destinations and gave some synergy thereby educating the UK consumer that both Toronto and Ottawa are located within Ontario.

Our Trade Marketing team negotiated with four different tour operators who each supplied a price point and a call to action for the advertisements. A dedicated  splash page was built by Ontario Tourism and this was used as the call to action for the touring product.

Media was selected using Target Group Index analysis for each destination. We put ads into the weekend supplement magazines, BBC Wildlife and Country Living. We placed the city break adverts within the weekend newspaper travel display sections, Ottawa having a slightly different media choice than Toronto.

The campaign saw the biggest ever spend on online advertising. We invested in both site and audience centric sites buying over 45m impressions. The creative for the online advertisements reflected the press and magazine adverts and 30″ and 15″ touring online videos were produced. The city online ads clicked through to transactional sites for the tour operators whilst the touring online ads clicked through to the splash page.

The campaign ran from 1st to the 31st March and during that period, the Ontario splash page enjoyed an enormous 63,000 hits. In addition, the tour operators saw flight sales increase year on year by over 20% and bookings were up by over 8%.

Tokyo City: Meetings of Minds

We worked with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to hold a Tokyo City trade event on the 30th January 2009 designed to generate UK travel trade interest and awareness of Tokyo and increase destination/product knowledge. It is hoped that this increase in knowledge and confidence will generate an increase in passenger numbers from the United Kingdom to Tokyo.

Claritas Marketing appointed McCluskey International as a destination marketing consultant to carry out an agreed programme of activity promoting the Tokyo City Promotion to the travel trade in accordance with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s objectives.

The event consisted of two sessions (one morning and one afternoon); each providing each attendee the opportunity to meet and discuss business with representatives from many major Tokyo based travel agencies, hotels, airlines and exhibition venues.

Ticket to Toronto

We have been working on behalf of Ontario Tourism on joint consumer campaigns with tour operators within the UK market since 2004. In September 2008, a print and online fall campaign was executed by our consumer marketing division to promote Toronto city breaks.

The ads also appeared at London Underground stations, as you can see above.

We partnered with 4 local UK tour operators to close the sale. Each was asked to supply a Toronto city break package designed to drive the British consumer to take such a trip prior to Christmas. The overall positioning of the campaign was to promote the benefits of taking such a city break – great value for money (much cheaper than competition such as New York), fantastic Christmas shopping opportunities and a quick, easy weekend getaway – only a 7 hour flight.

A portion of the creative was designed to drive consumers direct to the relevant operators and the remainder drove consumers to a dedicated campaign splash page on the Ontario web site. This splash page provided more destination information and played host to each tour operator’s call to action, logo and price points. In addition, one tour operator was asked to supply a competition prize (consisting of return flights from London to Heathrow, return transfers and 3 nights accommodation in Toronto for two) to aid in boosting the campaign response.

This campaign worked well by building awareness for Ontario and driving sales to Toronto with participating tour operators sighting an increase in sales.