By Les Luchter at MediaPost

Please see the full article in MediaPost | Jul 12, 2022

Providing an example of how a retailer can use out-of-home to zero in on specific consumers, regional alcohol chain ABC Fine Wine and Spirits is targeting people from Alabama and Georgia who drive to the Florida Panhandle for week-long summer vacations.

"Summer is an especially important time to add marketing support for our three Panhandle store locations [Pensacola, Destin, and Panama City Beach] because of the surge of vacationers heading to the area's great beaches,” Sean Kelly, ABC’s chief operations and marketing officer, told Marketing Daily. “With our increased competition, this campaign gives us an opportunity to stand out."

Beth Johnson, founder of Washington, DC-based independent agency RP3, which handles ABC’s creative and media, stated that the billboards “remind vacationers that ABC’s outlets are located close to the beach, and they have everything they need to celebrate and enjoy the summer.”

Vacationers being targeted are generally young families or groups of friends, RP3 said.

They’ll see different billboards pairing ABC with different alcohol brands (which were uninvolved with the campaign’s funding):

• “For beach traffic, we have an express lane. Order online for pickup” reads the board for Tito’s Vodka.
• High Noon Vodka and Soda, meanwhile, is “The summer fling you can count on.”
• Maker’s Mark bourbon becomes “The official sponsor of vacation mode.”
• And the board for Veuve Clicquot Champagne compares Gulf Coast vacations to French ones: “Different Riviera, same bubbles.”

The campaign will run through Labor Day on 10 highway billboards, bought by RP3 through Media Can Do, which include a couple of digital boards and one trivision.

How large is the target audience? Destin alone gets up to 25,000 tourists at peak season, according to the NWF [North West Florida] Daily News, while Panama City Beach estimates some 85,000 daily visitors.