After going head-to-head with companies like Bose and Activision, The Montana Office of Tourism claimed the Creative Media Award for best mobile marketing this week.  Montana won the award for an ad campaign that targeted skiers and snowboarders.

"They would receive these images of Montana with more information about what it is like to ski here," explained Montana Office of Tourism Public Information Officer Daniel Iverson. "Sometimes they would get that while they were actually at a ski location. So Imagine that you are in a long lift line in Colorado and you see these ads for Montana, where the lift tickets are much cheaper and the lines are much shorter... that's a pretty compelling reason to want to come here."

Because of new technology in cell phones, the ad was able to track who actually made a trip to Montana after seeing the ad.

"One of the really cool things about it was, using the GPS on the phone, we were able to see who received the ads and who then came to Montana," Iverson said. "We call that a conversion, if they were effected by the advertising. That's how we were able to calculate a return on investment that showed that we brought nearly seven million dollars to the state on this campaign that we spent only $25,000 on."

The Creative Media Award is the fourth award the Montana Office of Tourism has won so far with the mobile skiing ads, but this is the first time it competed against ads outside of the tourism market.

 

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