Colonial Williamsburg and the operators of the Jamestown Settlement and Yorktown Victory Center have a new message for folks deciding where to vacation: The Historic Triangle is fun.
To drive that point home, they are preparing an advertising campaign for 2015 fixated on the fun that can be had at the trio of historical interpretation sites along with the Yorktown battlefield and Historic Jamestowne. The campaign’s goal is to boost sales of the America’s Historic Triangle ticket, which grants entry to all five sites for $88.50 for adults and $38.75 for children aged 6 to 15.
One ad depicts a focused rider clutching an important document, bounding down a Colonial Williamsburg street as visitors look on and cheer. Imposed over the image is text reading “Fun so close you can touch it.” Another says “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of fun” and shows a smiling boy in Continental Army blues, clutching a mock musket as he stands in a line of steely-faced rebel soldiers locked at attention.
“It means more than picturing what a visitor might see. The key is how they fit into the picture,” Skip Ferebee, Colonial Williamsburg’s director of consumer sales and development, told the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation’s board of directors during a discussion of next year’s advertising campaign.
The new campaign comes after three years of declining admissions to the foundation’s two sites. Total admissions across both slipped from 595,023 in 2010 to 560,072 in 2013. Annual revenue has risen by more than $150,000 to $5.153 million during that stretch, during which ticket prices have climbed by $0.25 for adults at the Yorktown Victory Center and $2 for the Jamestown Settlement.
The ads will be placed on the Internet and in printed publications. There will also be a brochure, which will have about 400,000 copies printed and distributed in paid racks at visitors’ centers and rest stops along interstates 85 and 95 and at sites in neighboring states.
The brochure, titled “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Fun,” is packed full of images of guests involved in the action. The draft version’s cover shows a troop of boys adorned in colonial-era garb, standing in a grassy area with instruments strewn over their shoulders as they wave their tri-corner hats in the air. Another photo, positioned below a header reading “A stunning all-American road,” shows a bright red antique sports car tooling down the Colonial Parkway.
There are also pictures of guests riding horses and exchanging pleasantries with uniformed Continental officers and glaring excitedly at an artifact on the deck of one of the three re-created ships at the Jamestown Settlement.
The online and print ads will target adults, with or without kids, who are between the ages of 35 and 59 and looking for a fun vacation. They will be disseminated to the Baltimore, Raleigh/Durham, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Eastern New York markets.
The emphasis on fun coincides with research conducted by Luckie & Company, an Alabama-based advertising firm which has been studying the Triangle and how to attract people to it. During an August presentation to tourism officials from the area, Luckie’s vice president and chief strategy officer Jay Waters said fun was among the most important variables in the minds of people planning vacations, while arts, learning and history were the least.
Coinciding with the new advertising campaign is a new version of historyisfun.org, the foundation’s website. Gone are the long lists of text and the single large banner image splayed across the top of the page, replaced by a scrolling interactive labyrinth of pictures taken at the foundation’s two sites. The images range from an interpreter telling a child about the contents of plates of food — clicking on it leads to information about an upcoming Thanksgiving event — to a beaming young boy aboard one of the re-created ships, which links to a page describing the ships in detail.
The new site also replaces the small social media buttons on the side of the last page with a direct link to the foundation’s Facebook page and a button which allows users to subscribe to it without having to leave the page.
Along with tourists, the foundation also serves schoolchildren from across Virginia. Nearly 200,000 students from school divisions across the state journeyed to the Historic Triangle for on-site education at one or both foundation sites. An additional 88,266 students from 105 school divisions across the state were served via outreach tools like online videos and lectures.
