Los Angeles is the Capital of Creativity, so it took an extra edge to elevate this Tier 1 destination’s group business. A collaboration with Digital Edge has helped evolve the Southern California city’s brand messaging and apply it to its B2B audience.
Here’s LA’s story with Digital Edge.
Meet LA — the sales and marketing team for LA’s meetings & conventions sector — needed:
Meet LA partnered with Digital Edge in 2020. But we all remember what started that year: the pandemic. As one of the most globally well-known destinations, LA is celebrated as an exciting, creative and welcoming place for visitors. But during that challenging time, even the region’s undeniable magnetism needed some stronger forces to inspire domestic travel from leisure and meetings & conventions. So, when most of the country was fresh out of lockdown, the LA team’s staff was significantly reduced, and the destination’s post-pandemic branding was making its debut; one of our tasks was helping Meet LA regain its group business momentum.
Digital Edge got to work with the Meet LA team and LA Tourism’s branding task force to understand the new brand fully. In addition, we gathered real-time sentiment and intel from the LA CAB and sales team. From this, we started developing a strategy adapted to planners’ and attendees’ needs.
Digital Edge set out to share LA’s comeback story and show meeting planners that the Capital of Creativity was open for meetings and ready to bring groups back together again. We created the companion message, “Plan Your Comeback,” and a tailored digital strategy to parallel LA’s consumer marketing timeline and resonate with meeting and event professionals.
Since then, our teams have continued to work together each year to evolve the marketing strategies and messaging. We created the campaign headline, “Flip the Script,” as a transition from the LA team’s “Plan Your Comeback” message – this was our nod to LA as the “Entertainment Capital of the World ” and encouraged planners to move forward and think differently.
The LA team then created a progressive campaign message that was as inviting as a call to action: “Now Playing.” As LA rolls out the red carpet to some of the biggest events in the world over the next decade, now is the time for planners and attendees to experience a destination unlike any other.
The unifying efforts between leisure and group marketing have allowed all teams to create a cohesive experience between the B2C and B2B audiences — a natural overlap that can easily happen in a city full of possibilities.
The LA sales team has a strong digital presence backing its efforts and has kept busy with group interest and RFPs for future business. The team reports seeing record-high lead volume for new group business.
Meet LA Site
(January 1-December 31, 2023)