Aruba: Lilian: Romance

A new North American marketing campaign for the Aruba Tourism Authority created by NYC-based Concept Farm is using authentic local voices to distinguish itself from its Caribbean competitors.

The “Authentic Aruba” campaign highlights one of the destinations’ strongest reasons for visiting – its warm and sunny people. The integrated campaign features dozens of Arubans, making a human connection between “One happy island” and its visitors – a connection today’s experiential traveler craves.

The centerpiece of the campaign features six niche-focused landing pages “hosted” by a different Aruban local – matching audience interests with the activities Aruba offers. Culture, culinary and romance are part of the new push, following the wellness, adventure and family niches that kick-started the campaign in 2017. Content will include short, medium and long format videos, GIFs and interactive content across TV, digital, social, native, influencers, print, OOH and trade shows. All content will live on https://www.aruba.com/us/local-stories-travel-guide.

“Local storytelling stimulates experiential travel and on-island spend. With Concept Farm’s help, we have unlocked our biggest asset – and one of our best marketing tools: The Aruban people,” said Ronella Tjin Asjoe-Croes, CEO of Aruba Tourism Authority. “Our goal is to innovate sustainably and increase value in tourism and this flows naturally from engaging our Aruban community with tourism.”

In addition, the campaign will be featured in an installation throughout the Metro North platforms at Grand Central Station from 10/29-11/24, including more than 140 panels featuring a sweepstakes to win a trip to Aruba with a stay at the Ritz-Carlton. The installation is specifically tailored to the environment using headlines such as “Take The Express to Local Aruba," "Take a paddle board not a train" and others.

John Speers, Strategy & Client Director at Concept Farm says, “We needed to do more than just present activities in a beautiful setting. We needed to highlight the uniqueness of Aruba’s wonderful people and awe-inspiring place. The storytelling drives real emotional engagement and conversion. Our process for this is called the 'Brand Being,' which unearths the human essence of a destination.”

Speers continues, “There’s much talk of ‘engagement’ in the business, but at the end of the day people engage with people not things. Our local-focused content has seen YouTube completion rates over 4x travel benchmarks, 6 million publisher video views, over a million social views with average engagement 87% above Facebook benchmark and click through rates over 8x conventional display advertising.”

Concept Farm’s work for Aruba has led to record-setting visitation increases over the last 5 years with a 10% increase in 2017 alone. North American visitation has grown to nearly 700k per year and Aruba has set the pace for the Caribbean with nearly 85% hotel occupancy rates. Commensurate with those big numbers comes an increase in on-island spend, which is critical as Aruba is the most tourism dependent island nation in the Caribbean. Earlier this year Aruba and Concept Farm won 11 HSMAI Adrian Awards – the most for any destination – for best use of content strategy, virtual reality, social media, video content and the prestigious Pioneer of Visual Storytelling honor.