\nATLANTIC CITY \u2014 The marketing group that created the \u201cDo AC\u201d campaign wants to start giving visitors more specific reasons to \u201cdo\u201d just that.
\n\tNearly half of the group\u2019s advertising budget will push specific events, compared with last year, when only 8 percent of the Atlantic City Alliance\u2019s annual advertising budget was used for that purpose.
\n\tTo demonstrate the strategic change, the alliance announced Thursday that it will fund a free midweek beach concert July 31 with country music superstar Blake Shelton. Organizers are hoping that Shelton, who\u2019s also known for his role as a judge on NBC\u2019s \u201cThe Voice\u201d could draw as many as 200,000 people to the resort for the Thursday night concert.
\n\tThe alliance has sponsored a number of other events since the campaign launched in 2012, but many of those events have been held on weekends when the resort typically sees more visitors. Shelton\u2019s appearance will be on a Thursday, ACA President Liza Cartmell said, adding that the casino interests represented on ACA\u2019s board believe the country singer is well-known enough to draw an audience midweek.
\n\t\u201cTo go for midweek, you have to get something so special that people will be willing to maybe take a day off from work and extend a weekend,\u201d Cartmell said. \u201cYou can\u2019t just throw money at things and not think about the result.\u201d
\n\tAlliance officials said they\u2019ve been working for months to secure Shelton\u2019s appearance and are hoping that other summer entertainment announcements might follow as pitches have already been made to other artists. That would allow the alliance to make better use of the temporary outdoor stage it will pay to construct next to The Pier at Caesars, Cartmell said.
\n\tWith 47 percent of the alliance\u2019s 2014 advertising budget devoted to specific events, the group will be promoting draws such as the Challenge Triathlon, the first Challenge event to be held in the U.S., the July 4th fireworks and the Atlantic City Airshow.
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s amazing how many people in Philadelphia still don\u2019t know about the airshow. That\u2019s something we have to do a better job with,\u201d Cartmell said.
\n\tThe airshow is also a free event that draws large crowds to Atlantic City\u2019s beaches.
\n\tShelton\u2019s concert will feature a premiere viewing area closest to the stage that can accommodate roughly 60,000 ticketed people, but those tickets will be free.
\n\tThat will allow the alliance to accurately gauge at least part of the crowd.
\n\tThe alliance has also partnered with the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to launch a new mobile-compatible website. In keeping with the push for specific events, the new website includes a carousel of upcoming entertainment in the city, the group announced in an overview of its summer campaign at a Greater Atlantic City Chamber breakfast at the Sheraton Atlantic City Convention Center Hotel.
\n\tThe alliance also released a report Thursday, analyzing the effects of its 2013 campaign. In a poll of 3,600 people from New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., 54 percent said they would recommend visiting Atlantic City to others. That\u2019s a 17 percent increase from the previous year.
\n\tFifty-eight percent of respondents said they intend to visit Atlantic City, a 21 percent increase from 2012 survey results.
\n\tThe resort continues to struggle in perceptions of cleanliness and safety. Twenty-five percent of respondents said Atlantic City is a very clean place to visit, and 28 percent described Atlantic City as safe. Those are 9 percent and 8 percent increases respectively over the previous year\u2019s results.
\n\t\u201cClean and safe are hard things to talk about in marketing without making it sound like it’s an issue,\u201d Cartmell said.<\/p>\n
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ATLANTIC CITY \u2014 The marketing group that created the \u201cDo AC\u201d campaign wants to start giving visitors more specific reasons to \u201cdo\u201d just that. Nearly half of the group\u2019s advertising budget will push specific events, compared with last year, when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-casino-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}