Coming monday Curacao’s largest marketing campaign in the US to date will be kicked off. The campaign is called the Curacao Treasure Hunt and participants have a chance of winning a trip for two to Curacao every day as well as the buried treasure of $500,000. That’s half-a-million bucks!
The idea of this campaign is to raise awareness of Curacao in the US market. The lack of awareness and name recognition has been a problem for Curacao in the US for a long time. Since being aware of a destination is the first step in booking a trip this has held back visits from the US in the past. With this new campaign the Curacao Tourist Board aims to not only increase the amount of US visitors in the short run but also in the long run.
Visitors to the Treasure Hunt website can enter the competition by answering a Curacao-related question. If they don’t know the answer, they can find it on curacao.com. There’s a new question every day for 70 days and every day people answer the question they get a chance to win the grand prize of $500,000. So, answer the question 70 times and you have 70 chances. Participants also have a chance every day to win a trip for two to Curacao as a day-prize.
After the 70 days of the competition a big raffle is held and 10 participants are drawn to come to Curacao somewhere in August to compete in the actual treasure hunt.
The marketing for this campaign is extensive. There are television commercials, a dedicated iPhone app (a Caribbean first), heaps of display ads (online & offline), search engine advertising and loads of PR and buzz.
The teams of M&C Saatchi, KSL Media, Hill and Knowlton and the CTB US office are also working on what to do when those 10 treasure hunt participants come to Curacao and how to use this in the US. There has been talk of Ellen DeGeneres, Rachel Ray and/or Ingrid Hoffman coming to Curacao during the actual hunt but that’s still in the gossip stage. Judging by the all the marketing that’s going on now we do think it will be a huge event.
