Giving ATL Airport District’s Brand Awareness & Bookings a Lift

By Colette DuChanois

Digital Edge helped the ATL Airport District raise awareness about its connectivity to the world’s most traveled airport while distinguishing itself from the actual airport. Since creative work began, the District is seeing a soar in bookings and RFPs.

An additional perk: The concept and central message we created for the campaign—Wheels Down. Meet Up.—has taken off as an extension of the District’s brand and is now used across all their group marketing efforts.

Bookings Soaring Ahead of Pace in 2023

Bookings Being Made Further Out

RFPs
Increasing

Challenge

As a relatively new CVB, the ATL Airport District needed to build brand awareness among meeting planners about the destination’s assets, affordability and connectivity to the world’s most traveled airport, Georgia’s Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. In fact, the ATL Airport District has the world’s only convention center connected to an airport—the Gateway Center Convention Campus. The District also wanted to distinguish itself from the airport itself and Atlanta proper—but in a fresh way—as well as increase its online presence.

The next incoming arrival in this journey: Digital Edge Marketing.

Wheels Down. Meet Up. just sums it up so perfectly because … it gets our primary message that we are a meeting destination, but it doesn't tie us to [the airport] exactly.

Kristin Schneider

VICE PRESIDENT OF SALES, ATL AIRPORT DISTRICT

Solution

The ATL Airport District welcomed Digital Edge on board to give awareness a lift by growing the District’s digital footprint and letting meeting planners know that the destination is not the airport and that it is an alternative to Atlanta that’s a gateway to great meetings.

“They hired us to build their awareness that they are not the airport and that they have this wonderful convention center district campus within these districts connected to the airport, the only one in the whole U.S., and to be able to speak the language that the planners want to hear. That's why people hire us.”

KIM RITTEN | DIGITAL EDGE

VP OF CLIENT STRATEGY

We came up with a couple of main concept ideas, and the winner was Wheels Down. Meet Up. This message references the ATL Airport District’s ties to the airport while also differentiating the District as a meeting destination that is not just the airport. It also portrays the connectivity of the District and how meeting there is easy—attendees arrive directly at the anchor of the District for their event without having to deal with the busyness of downtown Atlanta. A bonus: The SkyTrain takes attendees directly to the convention center and hotel campus.

“The punchier we could be, the better. ‘Wheels down’ is a well-known travelers’ expression, so when I landed on it, it felt like a nice little companion to the message's main point – to ‘meet up.’ It was cool to see this headline become a multipurpose message for the destination’s other marketing efforts.”

KERRIE YANCEY | DIGITAL EDGE

CONTENT STRATEGIST

With the messaging down, we went the mile to create a marketing campaign that encompassed digital media, social distribution, meetings emails, sales activity emails, a new landing page, and fresh web content, including a Frequently Asked Questions Page and a three-day sample itinerary for meeting in the ATL Airport District. It was essential to make sure the campaign creative stayed along the same course as the District’s brand guidelines for awareness and recognition. DE’s creative team went above and beyond to ensure the user journey through the campaign touchpoints—like the landing page, digital banner ads and the District’s website.

“This was like the first time I finally got to design with depth capabilities that allowed me to have sort of like hideaway sections, so all these sections where we could have like these kinds of little slideshow moments, the toggle menu. … It was just very fun being able to include those—but also the animations, for sure.”

CAROLINE CIRILLO | DIGITAL EDGE

INTERACTIVE MEDIA DESIGNER

Results

The results of the digital marketing campaign Digital Edge created for the ATL Airport District can be seen in the numbers—but they go beyond just metrics.

The ATL Airport District team reports that bookings are soaring ahead of pace in 2023, the team is getting bookings further out, and requests for proposals (RFPs) are up.

Wheels Down. Meet Up.—that sums us up perfectly, why we love this campaign.

Andria Towne

VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING & TECHNOLOGY, ATL AIRPORT DISTRICT

By-the-Numbers Metrics

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