“Miami Beach is Breaking Up with Spring Break,” this year’s campaign proclaimed. The approach became a focal point to describe all of the City’s efforts, which were highlighted in a viral video, six (6) official press releases and 104 organic social media posts issued across all City-owned accounts. These combined efforts reached a global audience with an estimated 19.8 billion media impressions from over 1,086 news stories featured by 197 media organizations, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Miami Herald, all of the U.S. based television news networks to include the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and many more. Together with our minute-long video, the campaign far exceeded the reach of any prior city media campaign.
The video, which was produced through the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau’s agency of record VML, opened with a straight-up conversation between actors portraying young, 20-somethings who had grown weary of lawless spring breaks of the past.
For reference, the following chart shows prior spring break marketing campaigns from 2016 to 2022:
In order to deliver the message to as many people as possible, our communications and marketing efforts spanned across an array of channels, including organic and paid social media, paid digital ads, emails, text messages, web and out-of-home advertising.
Social media promotions alone resulted in a total of over 39 million impressions that drove 57,645 clicks to the site. From February 13 through March 31, 2024, 104 organic posts were published on city-owned social media channels, returning 6,917,635 organic impressions. Another 4,132 paid social media posts were published from city accounts and VML, garnering 32,299,046 total impressions driving 51,539 clicks to the website. Paid social media posts received 80,030 total engagements, 65,584 likes, 11,411 comments and 3,035 shares. Overall, 65% of users engaged on mobile (35% on desktop), with 82% on iOS and 18% on Android. The top five (5) countries reached were the United States, France, Canada, United Kingdom and Georgia (country). The top cities reached were Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Washington D.C. and Miami Beach.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) advertising resulted in 433,923 impressions that drove 96,863 clicks to the website. The outside Designated Market Area (DMAs) that drove the most clicks included New York, Tampa, West Palm Beach and Orlando-Daytona Beach. The top keywords included “Spring Break Miami Beach”, “Miami spring break rules” and “Miami spring break curfew” Digital ad placements resulted in 12,308,185 impressions that drove 2,080,567 video plays of our PSA and 15,561 clicks to the website. This represented a high click-through rate (CTR) of 13%.
Twelve total spring break-related emails were sent out, with eight (8) e-blasts dedicated to spring break messaging and four (4) generic E-Briefs with Spring Break messaging included. Each email was sent to an average of 39,670 subscribers with an average open rate of 47%. A total of 96.23% of users opened the emails on desktop and 3.78% opened on mobile. Thirteen dedicated text messages were sent to an average of 10,958 subscribers. Eight (8) of the text messages pertained to traffic, two (2) messages detailed the curfew, two (2) provided information about high-impact measures in general and one (1) text outlined parking restrictions. Many of the text messages included a link to the city’s spring break webpage or e-blasts.
The spring break webpage, www.miamibeachfl.gov/breakup, received 674,120 page views from 227,941 users. A total of 1,884,041 actions were taken from the webpage, including downloads, clicks, etc. The Take Care of Our City webpage, www.miamibeachfl.gov/take-care-of-our-city, received 6,951 page views from 2,854 users with 16,817 actions taken.
As noted in the referral memorandum (attached), the sponsor suggests “initiating the Spring Break marketing campaign process as early as possible rather than waiting until December or later.” The sponsor also notes that “starting our preparations by the summer will provide us with ample time to refine our strategies and maximize our outreach efforts.” The Administration aims to start working on this campaign by the end of this summer and recommends launching the next campaign by early January 2025 when most spring breakers begin to book their travel plans. We are thankful for the support of the GMCVB and their agency of record VML — and look forward to their continued collaboration in these efforts.
The referral also suggests that “including of the City’s Black Affairs Advisory Committee in the process with their valuable insights and perspectives as residents and experts in cultural linguistics particular to the idiosyncrasies of our tri-county area will ensure that our messaging resonates with all segments of our larger community, and address any potential blind spots in our marketing strategy.” The Administration appreciates the willingness of the Black Affairs Advisory Committee to be included in the process and will endeavor to do so, within reason, and while keeping in mind that the goals and desired outcomes of the Mayor and City Commission may or may not be in full alignment with the recommendations of advisory groups. As done this year, it is also recommended that the future spring break marketing campaign rely on insights from a younger demographic as this is a key target audience.