News and Insights
FINN Takes Home Win for Sarah Funky’s Guide to Greater Fort Lauderdale
August 7, 2019
It’s a win for FINN!
This summer Finn Partners took home a win in the 2019 PRSA Sunshine District Radiance Awards for our work with leading travel influencer, Sarah Funky, on her ultimate travel guide to Greater Fort Lauderdale – a long-term FINN travel and tourism client.
Here’s how we put this award-winning campaign together – and three takeaways for successful influencer campaigns.
At the core of this campaign’s success is one of FINN’s agency values: collaboration. Putting together an award-winning campaign is a team effort – one that brought together social savvy from our DC-based digital team and destination insider knowledge from our Fort Lauderdale, FL-based travel team. We also worked with our contacts at the Greater Fort Lauderdale Conventions and Visitors Bureau to ensure our campaign elevated priority topics and messaging for the destination and showcased its modern-day resurgence.
And the final results? In addition to our Radiance Award, FINN delivered a highly-detailed and personalized itinerary to Sarah to guide her through a three-day trip to Greater Fort Lauderdale, highlighting opportunities for adventure travel, culinary delights, and nightlife hotspots.
Not only did Sarah cover these experiences on her social media handles and blog for her followers, but she also featured her time in Greater Fort Lauderdale as part of a takeover of Travel + Leisure’s Instagram Story she hosted – extending the reach of key messaging on the destination’s resurgence to a wider audience. FINN helped extend the reach of Sarah’s trip with a placement in Forbes, citing Greater Fort Lauderdale as a hot travel destination for 2019.
After the campaign, three elements to our success were immediately clear:
Focus. There’s a little something for everyone in Greater Fort Lauderdale! But by picking three focal points for Sarah’s visit – adventure, culinary, and nightlife – we were better able to elevate Greater Fort Lauderdale as a hub for all three areas, delivering messaging that was appealing to Sarah’s audience and other travelers who seek these experiences.
Plan. Planning is essential! Our detailed itinerary, which included everything from flights, social handles and hashtags, and fun facts about every stop, ensured we made the most of Sarah’s time in Greater Fort Lauderdale – and that she was freed up from thinking about details like drive time to focus on exploring and capturing content.
Collaborate. This campaign was truly a team effort – from FINN’s staff in Florida to guidance from the GFL CVB, and our close working relationship with Sarah. Teamwork was essential to producing Sarah’s trips and placements and coverage after the fact.