“There’s Nothing Here,” the integrated marketing campaign that we created for the Montana Office of Tourism, has won several big awards, including the first Silver Effie for a destination in a decade and Best Overall Campaign recognition from the organization that represents all of the state tourism offices in the U.S.

Why has this campaign been singled out by both the advertising and travel industries? Not because of the extremely cute name, and not because the judges were impressed with how pretty the pictures were. Believe it or not, these awards are actually based on results, and “There’s Nothing Here” was and continues to be extremely successful. It has been shown to nearly double intent to visit among Geotravelers in key markets, and it helped Montana achieve the highest hotel occupancy rates in the country during summer 2010.

In fact, for every dollar invested by Montana taxpayers into the campaign in 2010, visitors spent an additional $104 in the state.

We knew all of that, and yet we were not quite prepared for the level of recognition the campaign has received. We’re very proud of what we do, and it’s nice to be patted on the back, but it still surprises us every time it happens.

We and the Montana Office of Tourism now have one more accolade to put on our shelf — Gold in Travel Weekly’s Magellan Awards. Travel Weekly, of course, is the go-to source for industry news in the travel world, and their annual Magellan Awards are not a marketing competition. They call out people and businesses in all aspects of the industry that the judges think are doing exemplary work.

You can find the full press release on this award here: http://mrcry.us/MagellanRelease

So, a big thank you to Travel Weekly and the judges. But you’ll have to excuse us - we can’t rest in the spotlight very long; we have next year’s award-winning campaigns to attend to.