Saturday evening, VI Marketing and Branding won 5 of the 7 Heartland Emmy Awards that we were finalists for. All of these awards were for work that makes Oklahoma a better place to call home. Five Emmys are a lot for one year, and we are the only marketing firm in Oklahoma that won any awards. The first award was for the Oklahoma Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust. This organization takes a proactive approach to improving public health in Oklahoma. They are responsible for cutting smoking rates almost in half. They take a purely science-based approach to their work to change behaviors related to nutrition, fitness, tobacco and second-hand smoke, vaping (which is still unregulated) and many other programs and campaigns. It’s great work and saves Oklahoma hundreds of millions of dollars annually by improving our health status. This makes the Emmy even sweeter because this was not the sexiest story in the category.
We also won four awards for our work for Oklahoma Tourism. We have really dominated the awards shows the last few years with this work. Tourism in Oklahoma is worth about $10 billion to the state each year. The return on investment rivals any organization in the state — whether private or public, despite a modest budget when compared to neighboring states. Arkansas has a tourism budget that is about 5x Oklahoma’s. The Kansas budget is similar to Oklahoma, and Texas — well, there are so many different tourism budgets in Texas that ours doesn’t begin to compare. Yet, Oklahoma is still competing for many of the same travelers that our neighbors do.
As such, developing attractive and enticing messages that motivate travelers to visit Oklahoma is crucial. We get massively outspent, so we need great creative campaigns to differentiate and stand out. If you are of the mindset that ‘awards don’t matter, only results do,’ I am not arguing against that. However, that is really a different point because a great creative campaign does drive results when it is done strategically, generates consideration and motivates the audience to action. Oklahoma’s tourism messages are unique — they don’t look or feel like other tourism campaigns. Most other tourism campaigns are pretty similar, frankly, especially in the Midwest and Southwest. You wouldn’t be able to tell one from the other if it didn’t have the state logo pasted in the corner.
We also do a fair amount of work in banking and finance. To the average consumer, financial products are commodities. This highly regulated industry forces the marketing to be somewhat homogenous. As such, most marketers default to generating brand awareness — maximizing impressions for the dollar. They give in. Or give up. But VI leans on our creative chops with these really competitive industries. These industries are where creative really, really matters. Creative that gets your attention and makes you WANT to act is both the most difficult and the most important in these industries where it’s super hard to be sexy.
Results matter more than anything. More than everything. And sometimes you still have to get there through breakthrough creative campaigns.
