CASE STUDY: SHINING A LIGHT ON COLORADO’S DARK SKIES
In 2016, the Colorado Tourism Office launched it’s now celebrated Destination Development program that creates awareness of less visited regions and amplifies the unique stories of Colorado’s rural destinations. One of the key tenants of the program is to increase traveler spending through the creation and branding of new traveler experiences in less visited areas of Colorado. As such, in spring of 2020, several communities in Colorado that offer excellent dark skies experiences and programming partnered together to obtain a CTO marketing grant and launch a new dark sky tour connecting various rural areas of the state, “Colorado Stargazing: Experience the Night.” An effective public relations campaign shining a light on the offering and host communities was one of the key pillars supporting this overall effort. Handlebar PR embraced this initiative and launched a dedicated effort to drive strong media coverage of the new self-guided tour offering in key publications across the U.S.
WHAT WE DID
Built a media tool kit with story ideas, road trip itineraries and assets highlighting Colorado’s dark skies offerings.
Developed a target media list and series of pitches, and engaged various top-tier editors and freelance contacts.
Hosted an upwards of seven media on individual media trips showcasing destinations and experiences in Colorado’s dark sky communities.
RESULTS
As a result of pitching story ideas and hosting media trips focused on the new “Colorado Stargazing: Experience the Night” tour and Colorado’s rural dark sky destinations, Handlebar PR placed more than a dozen prominent stories lifting up Colorado’s dark sky communities and experiences in key publications on the team’s Top 100 Target Media Outlet list including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Traveler, San Antonio Magazine, Subaru Drive, Roadtrippers and more.
The stories drove more than 89M impressions and $202K in media value.
The destination PR partners who helped in the creation of the “Colorado Stargazing: Experience the Night Skies” tour have been raving about the coverage that the Handlebar PR team has helped secure. While anecdotal, these destinations believe that the awareness created through these media placements helped to drive some of their strongest visitation on record for the last half of 2020.
PR coverage helped drive significant traffic to the “Colorado Stargazing: Experience the Night” landing page on Colorado.com, which is a key KPI for the Colorado Tourism Office.
The team was honored with a 2020 Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International Adrian Award, Silver Level in the New Opening/Launch category for our work around promoting Colorado's dark skies offerings and the “Colorado Stargazing: Experience the Night” tour.
“As a PR representative for many DMOs and programs throughout Colorado, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Caitie and Carly for several years, collaborating on promotion, media trips and more. Their professionalism and ingenuity have helped my clients earn placements in some of the nation’s most sought after outlets, creating a boost in tourism incomparable to other marketing strategies. Most recently, our collaboration in promoting ‘Colorado Stargazing: Experience the Night’ drew travelers from Colorado’s over-visited areas and into the state’s rural communities and helped garner the Handlebar team a 2020 Silver Adrian Award in Public Relations for their promotion of Colorado’s Dark Skies.”
— Lindsay Diamond, chief storyteller, VistaWorks Destination Management
