As more and more consumers turn to peer reviews for information on where to travel, MercuryCSC saw a hole in the online landscape that wasn’t being filled by sites like Yelp or Trip Advisor. These popular sites do a good job of crowdsourcing reviews for specific places to eat or stay, but in a rural state like Montana, they weren’t covering the little guys very well. Plus, neither site aggregates their content to give the user “trip ideas” to the offbeat and out-of-the-way towns that many travelers to Montana want to visit. Thus, Mercury developed a three-phase plan that built the brand from the ground up.

Phase One tapped into the emotion of residents and the most enthusiastic visitors, by encouraging people to share their stories about “Getting Lost” in Montana. Via a contest, this phase spread the concept of the Get Lost brand through story and photo sharing online, in advertising, and with stickers that were widely distributed and proudly displayed on thousands of vehicle across the state.

Once the brand and emotion behind it was established, Phase Two asked the enthusiasts to share even more: the specific things to do and specific places to eat and stay off the beaten path in Montana. More than 600 crowdsourced submissions were received in 10 weeks. These were mapped by the users, confirmed by our staff and then aggregated and editorialized into trip ideas. This gave the site a solid base of content from which to launch Phase Three.

The third phase shifted the user interface of the site again and re-launched as “Get Lost—The Insiders Guide to Montana”. Now the site was usable by anyone—whether they’d been to Montana before or not. People could look for weekend trips ideas or a place a local had recommended for a great burger or even create their own Montana bucket list of places they wanted to visit someday.

Further, it remains a living and breathing site which continually accepts submissions and continually aggregates them into trip ideas that anyone can use—particularly if they’re interested in what locals have to say. The dynamic nature of the content and the emotion and engagement used to develop the site with users continues to build brand enthusiasts for Montana and inspire people to “Get Lost”…to continually seek the bottomless pool of off-the-beaten-path places that define a place like Montana.