Horn Tootin'

It's time for a little horn tootin' my moi. My last post mentioned the conference I attended in Orlando, but I was too distracted by the approaching Tropical Storm to write about the award my agency won. So this is gonna be my bragging post for the month.

At the 41st Annual Governors Conference on Tourism, the state honors marketers for their success in attracting visitors to Florida, our number one industry. The "Henry" (named after Florida pioneer Henry Flagler), which is the top honor is given out in only 15 categories. We knew we were finalists in two categories for our work for Florida's Gulf Islands (Bradenton Area CVB), but we waited in anticipation to find out if we had won in either.

This year, it felt like the Oscars for us, and we were the newcomers to a field of veteran actors. Ya know, those guys and girls who get up and are awestruck at the other people they were nominated against? Granted, we are not newcomers to tourism brand marketing, but we were the smallest destination with the smallest budget to work with among the finalists.

The finalists in our two categories included very prominent destinations such as the county I live in, Lee County, plus Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, and the Florida Keys. Fort Lauderdale had already won 3 Henry's before our categories were called.

Our clients, Larry White and Susan Estler, were beaming with pride, as this is the first award their county of Manatee had ever received. The first category of Magazine Advertising was announced, and we succumbed to Lee County's awesome message in a bottle campaign. The very last category of the conference was Mixed Media, which includes your entire campaign, from identity to visitors guides to magazine ads to tv spots to radio, and on and on. It is your entire branding strategy from soup to nuts, so this one was big.

The last time my agency Insight won a Henry, it was for our work for Hawk's Cay Resort in the Florida Keys, an account we had for nine years. To date, our agency has collected 3 Finalist awards, 4 Henry's, and one Best of Show (in fact, the first one ever given out) since the inception of these awards in 1999.

The time came, the finalists were called on stage (the County's exec director Larry White joined the other  high profile directors on stage). We sat in the audience in anticipation… and the Henry goes to… Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau!!!!!! Woo hoo, we exploded with excitement at the two tables our group had taken up. There you have it, bigger isn't always better.

One final note, the hotel was very nice. It was the Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando. Huge conference hotel with 1,500 rooms. But the banquet food, less than spectacular would be an understatement.