Florida tourism, the oil spill and the little PR tool that could
Located just across the state line of Alabama lies beautiful Perdido Key, Florida. Just a few hundred yards wide in most places, it stretches some 16 miles, with more than half of it located in state and federal parks. One of the few areas of wilderness remaining in northwest Florida, the Key was on high alert as oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill made its way towards the Florida coast.
As the marketing firm for Perdido Key, we learned early on that the media spotlight was keenly focused on the oil’s impact to the beaches, long before there even was an impact. With potential visitors all over the country watching the news and deciding whether to cancel their vacations, it would be an uphill battle to reassure families that the oil hadn’t made it to Perdido Key yet.
At that point our real crisis wasn’t the oil, it was the perception of oil. We knew that we could shout from the rooftops that the Perdido Key coast was still snow white and the waters turquoise, but going toe to toe with the national media coverage was going to be hard.
So we took a different route. Instead of purchasing ad space in the national media, we set up an Oil Spill Updates section on Perdido Key’s Web site, and every weekday, someone from the Perdido Key Chamber walked across the highway to the beach and shot about a minute of video footage with a cell phone. With help from YouTube, the videos were then posted to the site, along with the most current information from several sources. We included links to the daily videos with our media alerts as well. Within 30 days, Web site traffic increased ten-fold.
At first, the Chamber received a few emails that accused them of trying to lie to the public—some people didn’t believe that the beaches were still so white and beautiful! But many visitors kept their Perdido Key vacation plans and the viral marketing began to multiply, with visitors posting their own Perdido Key videos on YouTube.
I’d like to say the oil never made it to Perdido Key. It did, although the BP response team has worked very hard to clean up every day. The beaches are still beautiful here, but occasionally traces of oil still wash ashore. We haven’t stopped posting the videos and information, and it’s still surprising to many who see just how clean the beaches still are. The videos worked because they followed the number one rule of crisis management: tell the truth.
