Kentucky is known for bourbon, horses, breathtaking scenery, and welcoming communities — but few realize the beauty hidden on drives between the 16 rural destinations in Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region, largely because connected by two-lane backgrounds, detouring the 79% of travelers worried about safety while trip-planning.
Kentucky Tourism rekindles the spirit of adventure, turning the challenge into opportunity, anchored by a two-minute destination film featuring Mike Wolfe from History Channel’s American Pickers, alongside Kentucky Heritage Tourism Preservationist Leticia Cline. This homage to the classic American road trip highlights the best of the Bluegrass with a cinematic b-roll capturing historic downtowns, a national historic landmark distillery, and iconic thoroughbred farms.
'Joy Ride’ shined a light on the joys of the open road, with a light nod to the Rebel Without a Cause spirit of yesteryear, with a fully-integrated campaign coming to life in TV, Print, Rack Cards, Digital, DMO-specific Social, Brochure Maps, Streaming Video, and buzzworthy PR, as well as a custom illustrated poster series to help grow awareness in each region.
Amassing over 8.6MM views on YouTube, with an impressive 3.5MM viewers watching the entire commercial without skipping. This high audience retention rate resulted in a staggering $0.01 CPV on YouTube. The campaign's reach extended beyond YouTube through Connected TV with Discovery, A+E Networks, HULU, and others, reaching over 2.2M households in top travel markets. Our earned media coverage significantly contributed to its success, achieving over 777MM earned impressions with an Advertising Value Equivalency of $3.8MM, with all efforts trending ahead of our KPI projections of $101.1MM in Incremental Visitor Spending and $7.7MM in Incremental State & Local Taxes (Effective Tax Rate = 8%) for 2024.
