Tag: real fun beach

Make a Video and Win $10,000

Panama City Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau is giving five lucky winners $10,000 in cash and prizes that include customized beach vacations. That’s a grand total of $50,000 worth of prizes.

To kick off the summer travel season, this award-winning destination on the Gulf of Mexico beckons with the REAL. FUN. BEACH. travel personality video contest. Launching on Memorial Day, May 25, and continuing through Labor Day, Sept. 7, 2009, this one-of-a-kind competition offers five epic prize packages tailored to the winner’s travel personality. Every package includes a five-night stay in plush, waterfront accommodations, plus customized vacation experiences, cash prizes and more.

“We’ve had a tremendous outpouring of interest in our new online contest,” says Dan Rowe, CEO, Panama City Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau. “Since its soft launch last week, traffic to our new Web site has jumped more than 55 percent. Web visitors hail from near and far – Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Canada, the U.K., Germany and France – to learn more about Panama City Beach’s unique contest and offerings.”

http://s3.amazonaws.com/memelabs/players/panama/meme_seeder.swf

So join the party. Whatever your kind of vacation fun, there’s a REAL. FUN. BEACH. prize package just for you, with travel experiences that include romantic dinners, spa packages, dolphin tours, passes to family attractions, full-day fishing excursions, seaplane rides, golf, water parks, wine tastings, VIP cards to nightlife hot spots, Yolo boards, iPods, professional cameras complete with photography lessons and more.

Looking for vacation inspiration? Panama City Beach will help you channel your inner travel personality. Take the destination’s quick quiz online at www.realfuncontest.com or at the “Panama City Beach Real Fun Contest” section of www.visitpanamacitybeach.com, and discover your kind of vacation fun.

Are you the family-fun Sandy Bottom Bunch, looking for beautiful beaches plus water parks, mini-golf, ice cream and pirate cruises? Or a Soul Surfer, who loves a stroll on the beach, day at the spa and shopping, topped off with a candlelight dinner on a breezy gulf-front terrace? Maybe you’re an Eco-Seeker, whose kind of fun is kayaking through crystalline waters. Or an adventure-loving Wave Warrior eager to fish in big tournaments and snorkel, leaving no reef unexplored. When the sun goes down, Panama City Beach lights up. For dancing, concerts, jazz clubs and more, After Dark Sharks are drawn to the destination’s vibrant nightlife.

The Panama City Beach REAL. FUN. BEACH. contest has a lot of personality, and now is your moment to let your travel personality shine! So what are you waiting for? Take the REAL. FUN. BEACH. quick quiz, create your original video and upload it at www.realfuncontest.com any time from Memorial Day, May 25, to July 4, 2009. No need for a big production. Any type of video – digital camera, webcam, camera phone, etc. – will do. Creating your travel personality video is part of the fun.

A panel of Beach Experts will select ten semifinalists for each travel personality. For decisions this large though, everyone is welcome to dive in. Semifinalists’ videos will be posted at www.realfuncontest.com, and the online polls will be open for voting from July 15 through Sept. 1, 2009. One winner in each of the five categories will be chosen by popular vote. Winners will be announced on Labor Day, Sept. 7, 2009.

Panama City Beach boasts emerald waters and 27 miles of sugar-white sand. That’s 27 miles for all types of styles. Go to www.realfuncontest.com, and discover your travel personality and the REAL. FUN. BEACH. prize package that’s right for you.

Of course, some rules apply. The Panama City Beach REAL. FUN. BEACH. contest is open exclusively to residents of the U.S. who are at least 25 years of age. Entries are limited to individuals, and only one entry per person is allowed. All submissions will become property of the Panama City Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau with all rights reserved. Each winner must complete his or her vacation by Sep. 7, 2010. Blackout dates and other restrictions may apply.

Panama City Beach is the REAL. FUN. BEACH. and everyone’s invited. Go to www.realfuncontest.com or www.visitpanamacitybeach.com for more information. Now, let the FUN. begin . . .

The Difference Between "Real Fun Beach" and "Summer White Sale"

Here are 5 reasons why “Real Fun Beach” will work and 2008’s “Summer White Sale” wasted a lot of money.

1. “Real Fun Beach” (RFB) tells you exactly what Panama City Beach is, has been, and will always be.

It is what “the Beach Lovers Beach” was trying to be, but never was.

It replaces the long time, halfway official “world’s most beautiful beaches.” Claiming to be the world’s most beautiful beaches is a little too broad and boastful to hang your hat on, even though it’s a very true claim to me and thousands of others who love it here.

2. They got the domain name! YAY! “RealFunBeach.com” is a beautiful, easy to remember, easy to type, tells-you-what-it-is domain name.

3. The sub-concept — I’ll call it “Yesterday: Real, Today: Fun” since I don’t know what the staff and agencies call it — is equally brilliant. Its message says “one day you’re in your real world: worker, parent, student, etc., and today you can be in the fun world at the Real Fun Beach. This is perfect bait for fishing in PCB’s honey hole, Atlanta. A fast five hour drive from the real world to the fun world.

4. The “Yesterday/Today” idea can be used and reinvented in so many great ways. This is a concept that can grow and thrive for years, because it’s so flexible in letting us compare real world vs. fun world.

5. The offline campaign ties in perfectly to the online campaign. Go figure. Read Jason‘s article on the online campaign for more info.

And the “Summer White Sale”? It had none of this. Nothing to differentiate PCB, nothing to transform the mindset of the consumer about PCB (it actually reinforced negative perceptions of being a cheap, lower-class destination). Nothing that could grow and live on as a brand, nothing that could really help us move forward with a new image. It never had a chance.

A few concerns (only 3!) with this new campaign:

1.
Real. Fun. Beach.
Using. Periods. For. Emphasis. In. Headlines.
Way. Over. Done.
But. Maybe. It. Still. Works.
Heck. I’ve. Done. It. Before.

2. The cute little names for our tourists, Sandy Bottom Bunch, Soul Searcher, etc., are clever and can be expanded to define more types of visitors. Another great concept that could live on for years.

But since local tourism businesses will now have the ability to target these segments directly through the CVB site, who’s to say a big bar can’t clutter my “Soul Searcher” page when I expect only “relaxed and laid” back results for my vacation planning? Perhaps the CVB has a plan in place for this, but then they’re walking a fine line by telling one business that they do not qualify to market to the “Sandy Bottom Bunch.” This is another perfect example of why government entities and tax dollars should not be used to run business and marketing campaigns such as this one. This campaign, in a perfect world, would have been developed by one of the large accomodation providers or a coalition of private businesses such as the Greater PCB Chamber.

3. I am convinced that Jennifer Barbee and company will accurately measure online traffic through all the major channels, and probably help with offline measurement as well. With all this new data coming and being properly measured, don’t we all get to have a copy of that information? All bed tax dollars are spent equally and fairly for the benefit of the Bay County tourism industry, right? And since it’s run by the county, all citizens get access, right? And even tourists – who suffer the burden of the tax equally with the collectors – should get a peek since they helped fund it, right?

One last thing. The team did some research for this campaign in Atlanta. The professionals discovered what this hack in Lynn Haven has been telling you for 3 years: Atlanta does not know us, and the Atlantians who think they know us don’t know the real us. The fact that they’re already our number one market is irrelevant. Here’s something I’ll bet on in 2009 and 2010…there are many more potential visitors in Atlanta, Georgia (repeat visits included, of course) than there are the rest of the world. Call me crazy, but that’s just how it is when you add a little real world common sense to all the marketing research and data.

Now, with Real Fun Beach, I suggest all of you bed tax collectors jump on board with this idea, aim 5 easy hours up the road to Atlanta, use “Real Fun Beach” in your advertising, call your guests “Soggy Bottom Bunch” or “Dark Sharks” or whatever is being promoted on the web site and REALLY BUY INTO THIS THING TO MAKE IT WORK.