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Apparently concerned they weren’t getting enough visitors from Seattle, officials from the Tampa International Airport have decided to put those marketing degrees to good use. Executives blasted ’90s tunes and wore flannel during a particularly creative announcement planned by the airport’s marketing department to celebrate a direct flight from Tampa to Seattle.
Surrounded by the team of community partners who only two months ago were celebrating new flights to Panama City on Copa Airlines, Vice President of Marketing Chris Minner explained the significance of the announcement.
“Last summer, the day after we announced our new flights to Panama, the Business Journal asked its readers if they could pick one destination anywhere in the world that we should pull together to try to get, and the overwhelming response was the West Coast,” said Minner. “The Tampa/Seattle route was one of the top three under-served markets in the U.S., and today we fill that gap in our service.”
With the inaugural Alaska Airlines direct flight to Seattle scheduled to depart June 20, Tampa International Airport has planned a series of events to get the Bay area in a Seattle state of mind. Okay this is where this story gets good.
So, here’s how we imagine that little marketing meeting went.
Suit 1: “We need to find a way to get people from Seattle to vacation here.”
Suit 2: “What could we do to attract them? I mean what do “those” people like?”
Suit 1: “When I was in college I read in a book that they wear flannel shirts year-round, listen to Nirvana non-stop and drink coffee all the time. Plus I watched the movie ‘Singles’ a bunch of times,”
Suit 2: “We could dress up like them, play ‘their’ kind of music at the airport and offer them coffee or something. That would probably work.”
Suit 1: “Done and goddamn we are smart.”
As the two marketing geniuses high-fived each other, followed by a long, long embrace, with Nirvana’s “Territorial Pissings” playing in the background, they knew people from Seattle would line up in droves to vacation in their part of Florida.
D.T. Minich, executive director of Visit St. Petersburg Clearwater said that his team is eager to show off the comprehensive marketing campaign that will introduce the Pacific Northwest to the beaches around Tampa Bay. The campaigns were developed specifically for the off-beat tech savvy residents of Seattle who do not often respond to traditional media marketing.
“We’re ready to convince them that ‘Sunshine is the New Caffeine’,” said Minich, “It’s not just old people down here! We’re totally Grunge!”
