Greater Wilmington Convention & Visitors Bureau Launches Arts Campaign

The Greater Wilmington Convention and Visitors Bureau, the destination marketing organization for New Castle County, has launched a fall advertising campaign to promote the region’s arts scene.

Brendan Cooke, general director of OperaDelaware, said, “We are so grateful that the Bureau is helping to highlight the arts community in Wilmington. Arts lovers throughout the East Coast deserve to know that Wilmington is much more than a blip on the Amtrak line between D.C. and New York. There is such an embarrassment of cultural riches here, and with our red-hot culinary scene we offer a one-two punch that allows us to fight far above our weight class in the arena of cultural tourism.”

The digital campaign includes streaming audio, a social media component, advertisements on websites that attract arts enthusiasts, and geofencing advertising. Geofencing creates a virtual boundary around a designated area and then uses GPS technology to deliver ads to those that enter that boundary with their mobile devices. In this case, the geofenced areas encompass top arts-focused attractions outside of but within driving distance of Greater Wilmington, such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Bureau anticipates that the campaign will generate more than 2.4 million impressions (how many times the ads will be seen) in key markets including Greater Philadelphia and Greater Baltimore.
The three-month campaign, launched in September, was the result of a focus group the Bureau held for the local arts community last spring.

Jennifer Boes, executive director of the Bureau, said, “All agreed that northern Delaware has performing and visual arts offerings that rival those of much larger cities. All agreed that too many people are largely unaware of these offerings. We pledged to help increase awareness with this campaign.”

The campaign’s messaging takes a broad approach to the arts and then narrows to three major exhibitions that have launched or are launching this fall: “Abstract Flash: Unseen Andrew Wyeth” at the Brandywine Museum of Art; “Ann Lowe: American Couturier” at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library; and “The Rossettis” at the Delaware Art Museum. It is the Bureau’s hope that these major arts events will help drive traffic to Greater Wilmington’s broader arts community.

Ads direct visitors to an arts-specific website page that provides information on all Greater Wilmington’s arts offerings, ranging from Broadway shows and operatic performances to local art installations and community theater. The campaign also includes an email marketing component and a series of blog posts specific to the arts.