VisitLEX: "Come horse around in beautiful Lexington Kentucky"

To coincide with National Tourism Week (May 2-8), creative marketing agency CORNETT is turning an old-fashioned form of communication into a trendy method of destination marketing for the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau (VisitLEX).

As vaccinations continue to rise, the fear of catching COVID is subsiding—those who have gotten their shots are craving vacations and post-inoculation fun. An estimated 86% of American travelers have tentative leisure travel plans and 72.8% expect to travel for leisure within the next three months, according to industry group Destination Analysts. Of those, more than a third say their reason is to visit friends and relatives. But, oh, what places will they go? Lexington is making a case for itself.

Its agency, CORNETT, created Post(Vaccine)Cards to draw vaccinated vacationers to their fair city this summer. Designed to make it easy for Lexingtonians to send compelling invitations to their newly immunized loved ones, the Post(Vaccine)Cards are available for free at the Visitors Center. VisitLEX will even pay the postage.

Designed with a whimsical charm, the three cards feature familiar Lexington themes—horses and bourbon. “The only thing missing in Lexington is U,” says one in which a horseshoe fills in for the final letter. “Bourbon tastes better with you,” another laments.

To reach the widest audience and tug on as many heartstrings as possible, VisitLEX teamed up with several Lexington elementary schools to turn the marketing effort into a homework assignment for the best salespeople around: kids.

Young students are filling out Post(Vaccine)Cards as a fun activity (Not the bourbon one. That would be weird.) and VisitLEX is featuring some of the cutest and funniest on social media before sending them to their destination.

To support the effort, CORNETT created a video for social media that illustrates why postcards are an ideal tourism medium and shows how they look better on refrigerators than printed text messages.

Post(Vaccine)Cards will also be distributed around town at Lexington distilleries, breweries, and restaurants. Non-residents can download for free on the VisitLEX site. https://www.visitlex.com/postvaccinecards/