As Michigan's lawmakers discuss adding $9.5 million to promote tourism and business development in the state, local leaders in the Eastern Upper Peninsula are collaborating to buy a $60,000 summer radio advertising campaign that will feature destinations in the region.

The radio advertisements, which will be funded with $30,000 from local communities and a $30,000 match from the state's tourism organization, Travel Michigan, will run in the areas around Grand Rapids, Green Bay, and Toledo. The funding for this local promotion is not tied to the Pure Michigan campaign.

Participating will be the communities of St. Ignace, Les Cheneaux Islands, Curtis, Newberry, Sault Ste. Marie, Munising, and, possibly, Mackinac Island and Paradise, in a campaign similar to a program last fall.

The 60-second radio spot, which touts the region as an area of wonder and natural beauty, will run from April 1 through mid-July. The advertisement can be previewed on the Great Waters Web site at www.michigan.org/partners/ great-waters. As a part of the buy-in, partner communities, like the St. Ignace Visitors Bureau and the Les Cheneaux Islands Area Tourist Association, will also be featured and linked from the Web site.

The campaign is administered by Great Waters, the five-county collaborative promoting tourism in the Eastern U.P., and Northern Initiatives, an economic development organization in Marquette that serves the Upper Peninsula.

Leaders at Great Waters hope to have everything wrapped up for the radio campaign by Friday, March 12, and expect each community to pitch in about $4,000, depending on how many areas participate. If all eight communities that have expressed interest choose to buy into the campaign, the cost would be $3,750 per community.

Great Waters Reports Successful 2009 Advertising

Campaign

In August 2009, the Great Waters collaborative launched the “Wonders” radio advertising campaign that produced a 60-second spot that ran for six weeks in the Grand Rapids and Green Bay areas.

In a report compiled by Northern Initiatives, the group reported increased exposure of the partner communities and higher page views of the Web site promoting the region.

Overall clicks to individual area Web sites, which link off the main Great Waters page, increased from 2,908 clicks in August-October 2008 to 30,598 clicks for the same months in 2009, an increase of 952%.

The Great Waters page itself was the fourth most visited division of the state's tourism site (www. michigan. org) from September to October, just behind the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Harbor Country Convention and Visitors Bureau promoting Lake Michigan communities near the Indiana border, and Grand Rapids/Kent County Convention and Visitors Bureau. The Great Waters site saw 48,391 visitors in 2009.

Of this increased activity, Les Cheneaux Islands Area Tourist Association saw 1,451 clicks in August-October 2009, an increase of 268% over the same months in 2008. The St. Ignace Chamber of Commerce Web site saw 1,300 clicks in 2009 over the 36 clicks in the same months of 2008, and Mackinac County's Ports of Mackinac Web site saw 385 clicks in 2009, and was not linked to Great Waters in 2008.

The Great Waters also expanded to the Facebook social networking site with a fan page in July 2009, and attracted 1,096 fans from the sites users from 10 countries.

Linda Hoath, director of the Sault Ste. Marie Convention and Visitors Bureau, said her office saw a huge increase in the number of out-of-state visitors in the area in 2009, and she largely attributes it to Pure Michigan and Great Waters marketing and advertising.

“If we lose that money for the Pure Michigan campaign, that would be just horrible,” Mrs. Hoath said. “I am afraid for us if we don't have it.”

In addition to the Web site numbers, business owners in the U.P. have said they saw positive results in 2009, said Michelle Walk, Michigan State University Extension director in Mackinac County.

For example, Halfway Lake Resort in Newberry reported some of their best months in many years during the 2009 fall radio campaign, Ms. Walk said.

“We saw tremendous results from the fall campaign,” she said. “Everybody I talked to saw a positive impact.”