Want to connect to the green consumer? Help them stand out.

I recently listened to the Freakonomics podcast “Hey Baby, Is That a Prius You’re Driving?” and it got me thinking about consumption, specifically conspicuous nonconsumption, or conspicuous conservation. Call it what you want, the green consumer wants you to know they’re a good person–and that’s an insight that businesses can leverage to help change consumer behavior for the better.

Sustainable brands often try to blend ...

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“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 ...

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At the end of September, I was invited to the Ecotourism and Sustainable Tourism Conference (ESTC) on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina.

I was asked to present during a session called “Understanding Key Consumer Trends Driving Sustainable Business Practices,” which fits very well into our wheelhouse here at Mercury. We work hard to understand the Geotraveler better than anyone else in the business, and so I had a lot to say.

My thesis? Don't lead with green, lead ...

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We recently worked with Sustainable Tourism International to put on two webinars on social media, which I developed to be particularly useful to those in the Travel and Tourism sectors.

There were two sessions: one aimed at beginners and one aimed at more advanced practitioners. Both used cheesy yet effective metaphors to drive my points home.

My premise is that doing really great social media for your brand does not require learning a whole new skill set. It can seem ...

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A few days ago a coworker sent me an eMarketer article titled Social Media Comes Up Short for Agency Prospecting. For me, the piece fell well short of supporting that title or even moving the conversation forward very far, and I'd like to discuss the reasons why.

The post was an attempt to take some interesting new research, in this case from RSW/US and RSW/AgencySearch, and distill it into some sort of new take on the state ...

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Often, my colleagues and I joke about how amazing it is that my brain fits in my head. But, the funny part is, I’m not joking. My role here is to plan and put strategies in place to meet short- and long-term client objectives. Curiously, prior to my arrival here, my co-workers were busy executing award-winning campaigns. Who knew?

This past spring, MercuryCSC won an Effie award for our work on behalf of the Montana Office of Tourism. Even ...

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...with Donnie Clapp, Community Manager for Montana Office of Tourism

Talking to your friends is easy. Talking to a stranger is harder. Where do you start? How much do you talk about yourself? How many questions do you ask? What do you do with your hands?

Jumping into social media on behalf of your sustainability- or tourism-focused business is similar. You're on Facebook and Twitter, and you feel comfortable there with your friends and family. It should be just ...

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"I saw on Facebook that you won an award," began the email from my sister-in-law. "And you actually showed up in New York to receive it so it must be a big deal. Congratulations!"

So it has been, winning our first Effie award. The type of work we do, the clients we work with, the people who work here, and the place we live are all so different from the big corporate agency world that dominates not only advertising awards ...

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Will Rogers once joked, "If you can build a business up big enough, it's respectable." It's a good joke because the average person knows instinctively that size alone cannot determine the quality of a business.

In fact, I have written before on how a good idea can come from anywhere, and I like to see this idea peek through the fog of business discussion from time to time. My most recent vindication came at the welcome reception for ...

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The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) has been big news around these parts recently. The organization held a conference at Big Sky Resort and a few Mercurians attended to soak up the international business vibe.

One of the events was held at Bozeman pet product manufacturer West Paw Design. West Paw makes dog beds, chew toys, and such, largely from recycled and recyclable materials. West Paw President Spencer Williams (pictured at the podium) talked there about a pretty innovative program called ...

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“If you build it they will come...”

This memorable quote from the 1989 movie Field of Dreams could be mistaken as the guiding maxim for a whole lot of tourism developers, practitioners and marketers worldwide. The idea that future tourism success can be reduced to checkbox criteria nearly always justifies the same bland designs and storylines. The result being travel brands that try to appeal to a mass audience while not appealing to anyone in particular.

Who benefits from this ...

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We’ve been a bit quiet lately in our blog postings. You would think that we’ve been out trying to either embrace (or escape) the spring snow showers that have been showing up here every few days. But truth be told, we’ve been busy working on a variety of new initiatives and campaigns for several of our clients. So busy that it has taken a few days for it to sink in that we have recently found ourselves ...

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During a recent trip down to LA to visit an old friend, I went for a stroll along the boardwalk in Venice. Amid the array of sights, sounds, street performers and expected characters, something made me stop. That something was the juxtaposition of the Medical Marijuana Evaluation Center and Botox on the Beach.

Thinking back to Marketing 101, and the 5 P’s of Marketing: People, Product, Price, Place and Promotion, I wonder how Place is working for these businesses ...

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Next time you’re lounging around a hotel pool, gently ask the person at the chair next to you what they paid for their hotel stay. Odds are, they paid a different price. Then ask them what they paid for that iPad they’re reading. You don’t even have to ask the latter, do you?

Recently, Apple announced a mobile subscription service for publishers, a plan the Wall Street Journal said would lead to a battle with media companies ...

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I like the Super Bowl. I really do. I didn’t watch a complete NFL game all year, but I haven’t missed a Super Bowl in years. Maybe ever.

It is so over the top, such a uniquely American entertainment spectacle, it encapsulates so much about this country that I can’t help but watch it. And what other TV program can you still have a water cooler conversation about the next day? I miss those.

And so for ...

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"Take it easy, enjoy yourself, relax and don't rush into something," all sage words of advice I received from friends and colleagues when I notified them that I was leaving Nature Group, a family company I had started and helped grow for the last 8 years. The feeling of leaving something that I was so in-tune and enamored with felt a little like leaving a concert right in the middle of the set. The strangeness of it all was ...

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A few weeks ago we relaunched GetLostMT.com. Get Lost, a campaign to promote in-state tourism, initially took the form of a site based on user-submitted essays, photographs, and videos detailing how the author "got lost" in Montana.

We received hundreds of submissions from people and some fantastic and inspirational stories and photos. We also found, buried in those stories, a wealth of new places and things to do. In looking at how to evolve the site we decided to ...

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Apparently, we now live in such an artificial world that sugar has become a positive. Or so goes the theory behind throwback Pepsi…"made with REAL sugar!"

With marketing trends clearly headed towards honesty, simplicity and transparency—Pepsi’s throwback would seem to be a nod in that direction. Sugar is better than artificial sweeteners, right?

Of course, transparency only goes so far when you divulge the amount of sugar actually in the can via the metric system—a system ...

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The photo above was taken at a bar in Scotland during a recent conference that attracted people from all over the world. On the right, a pack of smokes purchased in the United Kingdom. On the left, a pack from Costa Rica. Though not pictured here, America’s warning on the hazards of smoking falls somewhere in between.

There is obviously some correlation between the size of the warning and how developed a country is and how it views personal ...

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Riding the Beartooth Highway and our guide, happy in the snow at the top of the pass.

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Count us among the many fans of the clothing brand Patagonia — though as marketing people, perhaps more so for the way they manage their brand than the clothes themselves. Regardless, like most fans, we’re keen to spend a few moments paging through the latest catalogue to see what cool photos they’ve found and what the wizards of Ventura are up to.

So it was our pleasure to see a piece of work we had created turn up in ...

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At the recent US Travel/ESTO national conference, the Montana Office of Tourism was presented two of the org’s most prestigious awards: Best Print Campaign and Best Interactive Campaign. As Montana’s strategic/creative agency, we at MercuryCSC were both humbled (aw shucks) and stoked!

Montana’s “Nothing Here” campaign runs against the grain of most conventional state tourism office campaigns. Instead of trying to serve up a formulaic “we’ve got it all” (see Biff, Buffy and the ...

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It's that time again. It's the middle of summer and that means it's time for us to pack our bags and head down to Salt Lake City for Outdoor Retailer. This year Mercury is headed down with the Montana Office of Tourism who, along with Belize and Norway, have been invited by the Adventure Travel Trade Association to partner up in their 1,000 square-foot Adventure Travel Hub in the center of the Grand Ballroom.

The Adventure ...

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Early last Monday morning, a small MercuryCSC crew made the dramatic (referencing the scenery, not the driving) 5-hour journey to East Glacier. Destination, Glacier Park Lodge for the semi-annual Tourism Advisory Council conference. The meeting site is ever-changing but we were happy to have our home base here:

After a day packed with Montana tourism updates, discussions, reports, facts, figures and wrapping up with a friendly Family Feud-style game--Glacier National Park vs. Yellowstone National Park--we walked to dinner.

Curiosities peppered ...

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After ranting (while also raving, in a positive manner) about the Montana ads that have taken over the Chicago CTA buses and the "L" in the Windy City, Barbara Brotman and The Chicago Tribune have decided to take on Montana. Montana's campaign showcasing Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park is "thrusting its mountainous finger right in our Midwest faces, taunting us with its magnificent scenery and world-class outdoor recreation," according to Brotman. So she and The Tribune are ...

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Interesting how social sites can be a magnifier of traditional advertising.  Or at least a little window into people’s conversations that we were never able to have just a few years ago.  Transit ads just started going up for Montana in cities around the U.S.  Twitter postings go up almost immediately after.

Here’s hoping this is an indicator it gets some more viral play like last year’s Seattle transit did.

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You know how people talk about something being so September 10?  I had that feeling reading this old post while cleaning out our old website press archive.  April, 2008 seems like a different era and it was just two years ago.  Though I must say, I wish I’d have listened to what I was actually saying and sold short in the stock market.  It was a remarkably prescient post!

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Two recent studies conducted by MercuryCSC indicate that travel spending among geotravelers will not decline as much as other groups. "Travel is not something they do," said Lex Sanford the lead researcher for the qualitative study. "It’s part of who they are." Quantitative data conducted in February 2009 by Leisure Trends Group, on behalf of MercuryCSC and the Montana Office of Tourism, supported Sanford’s findings. From a sample of 980+ people nationwide who were identified as geotravelers, nearly ...

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MercuryCSC has partnered with Alexis Sanford Consulting, an account planning?research firm whose clients include VISA, Toyota and Starbucks, to perform the first intensive qualitative research regarding an emerging travel demographic – the geotraveler. MercuryCSC and Sanford’s firm created a proprietary online focus group of nationwide participants facilitating a blog–type conversation over several days. Through the dialogue, Sanford was able to better pinpoint geotraveler values and emerging trends that have impact for travel–related brands including outdoor retail and ...

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