WORK
WORK
Jeremy Weber • Copywriter
How I Created a New Brand Tone
My team and I created a rewards program called Chatta-Fanatics to increase digital marketing reach for Chattanooga and expand interest in the city.
I created the brand tone for our Chatta-Fanatics email marketing campaign. To conjure up a fitting brand voice, I first identified one of Chattanooga's main selling points: Its natural beauty. To communicate that, I included words related to "beauty" in the new brand tone as often as possible. These words included "breathtaking," "glowing," "scenic," "gorgeous," "fall," "panorama," "beauty" and other related variations and combinations. To add to this, I identified the emotional feeling that natural beauty gives people. Beauty, as I discovered, seems to have a relaxing, invigorating effect on individuals. So in addition to my "beauty lexicon," I decided to focus on relaxation and inspiration as the main emotional benefits of the brand.
I added words into the brand like "relax," "unwind," "get that alive feeling," "discover" and other relaxation and inspiration-related words. Through Chatta-Fanatics, I grew our email list to 10,000+ subscribers, boosting reach and traffic for the Chattanooga Visitor's Bureau.
Email Marketing
Over the span of a year and a half, I wrote about 150 emails like this. Here's how the email campaign worked: (1) Recruit users into the Chatta-Fanatics rewards program through Facebook/Twitter/Instagram Ads that link to a sign-up page. (2) Send subscribers emails asking them to share social posts in exchange for points. (3) The higher their points, the better our subscribers' chances were of winning tangible prizes. (4) Fulfill prizes by snail-mailing them out to winners from the ad agency where I worked.
This particular email starts out by appealing to something we all experience: Vacations — wishing we had more of them, and hoping against hope they'll give us the relaxation we deserve. The copy leads the reader through with super short sentences that lengthen as interest increases. Finally, the copy ends asking the reader to share a social post. The "Bonus Tip" adds additional value, increasing the perceived worth of the email message in the reader's mind.
Making a Video Go Viral
This video ultimately garnered more than a million views. Together, the Chattanooga Visitor's Bureau (CVB) and I posted the video a total of three times. The first time the CVB posted it, the video racked up 100K Views and 148 Shares. The second time they posted it, the video gained another 217K Views and 4.4K Shares. However, when I posted the video with my own unique copy in the caption, the video raked in a whopping 621K Views and 13K Shares. Same video, different copy. Why the difference? I put a lot of thought and deliberate action into how I wrote the copy for the third posting of the video.
My copy reads: "Thousands of people are getting goosebumps watching this video, celebrating our lively, modern music scene and its rich, historic roots."
To begin with, I used a propaganda technique called "bandwagon" to make other viewers feel like they were missing out on the video because "thousands of people" were already watching it (which was true). Then, I described an emotional, even physical promise for watching the video that would create a craveable, anticipated reward: "getting goosebumps." The last bits of copy explain what the video is about, making Chattanooga readers feel like they should watch the video — if they do, in fact, feel a sense of pride in their city.
Viewed from the CVB's Page and shared posts from visitors, the video broke the 1M viewership mark.
Sending Traffic to the Company Website
I sent interested readers to the Chattanooga Visitor's Bureau blog with Facebook Ads like this. The status copy hooks them emotionally, connecting with the relaxation and inspiration-oriented brand tone I had established for Chatta-Fanatics. The headline draws them in with a proven-to-be-clickable list-style blog. And the description copy below it reinforces the benefits of jumping into a waterhole, further evoking thousands of clicks to the company's website.