MCALLEN HOLIDAY PARADE
THE CLIENT
McAllen may be a small town but their annual holiday parade is an amazing spectacle. For many years, the City of McAllen has always relied on marketing to McAllen residents and to their friendly neighbors in Mexico. For their 2017 parade, we were tasked with the challenge of advertising to reach markets North of the border such as San Antonio and Corpus Christi.
THE STRATEGY
We were hired at the last minute with a little over 3 weeks to strategize, create, and execute our game plan. We reviewed McAllen’s holiday parades of past taking into account what makes it special and how we can peak curiosity to people outside of McAllen who may have never experienced it for themselves. But, timing is everything when working with a narrow window. We developed the campaign starting with a teaser introduction for week 1, the campaign ads in weeks 2 and 3, with a final reminder on the day before the actual parade. Putting it all together, we worked with the City and the Chamber of Commerce by assembling a media plan involving billboards, social media, pandora radio, and advertising on mobile devices that fit perfectly into their budget. The main message: “We Do Christmas BIG!”
THE RESULTS
The first week of the campaign was kicked off with mobile messaging following an out of home campaign led by a simple message of “The Parade is Coming.” we increased website traffic over 88% while increasing pageviews by over 48%. Traffic from San Antonio increased over 457% while Corpus Christi traffic exploded by over 1,365%. We also saw noticeable traffic increases coming from both Austin and Houston. Mobile traffic jumped up by over 122%. Over the 3 weeks of our campaign from November 13th through December 2nd, traffic was increased by over 832%. San Antonio visitors were increased by over 2,048% and Corpus Christi by over 2,761% but it didn’t stop there. We also saw results in Houston growing traffic over 1,410% and Austin gaining over 901%. Parade concessions, hotels, and retail saw noticeable increases in people from our advertising zones on December 2nd, 2017.