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Ailment

Visit Baltimore is always looking for new ways for Baltimore to stand out among other cities. Persuading families and groups to visit is part of an ongoing mission. Awareness campaigns to hit both these goals occur frequently throughout the year, with many through email. So how could Visit Baltimore add 2,500 new, willing subscribers to a preexisting list of 28,000 email accounts? And how could Visit Baltimore achieve these new subscribers in less than three business days? Visit Baltimore had to create a buzz.

Prescription

1. Employ Baltimore's distinctive culture and attractions
2. Create an interactive gaming experience
3. Implement data-capturing modules
4. Leverage the viral nature of web-based marketing

Cure

Vitamin created a board-game concept to deploy by email and used a free trip to Baltimore as incentive. The final product was so enjoyable, recipients could not help but tell a friend. Goals were exceeded. Visit Baltimore garnered 3,686 contest entries, 1,476 forwarded emails and 2,563 new email accounts. The final piece was entered into an international sales and marketing contest. Visit Baltimore was pitted against convention bureaus as large as the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Baltimore won.

• A board-game concept and custom playing pieces were created. The pieces represented identifiable Baltimore icons and were delivered via HTML email
• Once the user selected his or her playing piece, the game launche. The center of the game changed as the user navigated his or her piece around the board
• "Send-to-a-friend" options and "sign up for free trip" were available in each screen view. When the forms were filled out, all info would save to Visit Baltimore's database of users and email accounts

View Completed Project