Visit Denver is a collection of private hospitality businesses (events, hotels, food and beverage, attractions, and outdoor recreation) that work together to drive tourism in the greater Denver area. Since COVID, they’ve been incredibly successful in galvanizing the damaged hospitality industry. As more and more tourists returned to Colorado, the need for more staff — across all hospitality sectors — quickly became apparent.
The staffing pipeline in the hospitality industry has always been largely focused on younger talent. That meant speaking to Gen-Z, an audience that approaches the ideas of work and employment completely differently than past generations. An external research company spent months collecting insights that we relied on to craft the strategy behind the campaign.
Creatively, this challenge gave our team endless inspiration and sparked a myriad of approaches. Initial concepts included the idea of pitting the excitement of the Hospitality industry against the perceived doldrums of corporate work or harnessing a rebellious, youthful spirit to push against those who tell us what path to follow. However, we ultimately decided to focus solely on the positive.
‘Boredom Is Fired’ was the campaign concept we finally chose to pursue. Blending fun, attention-grabbing headlines and dynamic imagery, the campaign highlights the neverending opportunities, wide range of positions, and novel experiences that employees can expect from working in the industry.
The campaign’s success hinged on us connecting with our audience. That meant authenticity. So why complicate things? Visit Denver got us behind-the-scenes access to hospitality businesses across Denver where we spent several days shooting photo and video of real employees performing their real jobs. The raw and unscripted approach created dynamic and gorgeous visuals that didn’t rely on setting a stage or faking situations.
After our intense but incredible shoots, we had a photo library and video spots for each hospitality sector. We also created OOH ads, a full digital campaign, and a full organic social strategy and content calendar. All our assets pushed traffic to the website which we also designed and developed. The site housed longer-form videos, information about each sector, salary stats, testimonials, and lots of resources to help anyone find and get a job. We even linked to dozens of open jobs in each sector.
With the campaign and website in place, we had one more undertaking: to develop an ambassador program. Together with Visit Denver, we were able to identify an individual from each hospitality sector who would share their story — telling us about their current role and the journey they went on to reach it. Each ambassador’s interview was turned into several videos full of advice and guidance for our target audience. The ambassadors also traveled to schools and job fairs in the region to connect with soon-to-be high school graduates on an individual level.
The campaign kicked off with a press conference at Dairy Block hosted by Visit Denver. The press was able to see the campaign, meet the ambassadors, and hear from key industry representatives. The event garnered massive earned-media impressions and was shared online and across statewide news channels. We couldn’t have asked for a better way to launch the campaign.
The paid and organic tactics worked together to excite Denver’s younger workforce! The Instagram account garners more followers every day and the website draws thousands of clicks to the job board. With the success following our first 6 months in market, we’re already working to expand the campaign in all media formats.
Impressions
'Find Jobs' Clicks (#1 Campaign Goal)
Average Session Duration