Digitize That! Innovative Destination Marketing Initiatives

Fresh and creative initiatives harnessing the power of digital media and tools designed to maximize engagement while following an integrated marketing approach.

VisitBritain Digital Torch Relay

Taking advantage of the Torch Relay journey across the UK, VisitBritain has just unveiled its digital and social media plans aiming to maximise the exposure of the relay destinations. A unique interactive map has been created on visitbritain.com and Love UK which allows potential visitors to ‘Follow the Torch’ as it makes its journey within 10 miles of 95 per cent of Britain. The ‘Follow the Torch’ map uses new integrated Google Street View technology so that followers across the world can see images and explore torch locations before they decide whether they want to visit. Destination content will be added each day as the journey progresses. Images and inspirational content will be posted via VisitBritain’s online network. All of VisitBritain’s digital platforms will be involved, with engaging content posted on Love UK - VisitBritain’s main Facebook page which now has nearly 800,000 fans, and has recently been named one of the biggest brand pages in the UK.

VisitBritain’s Super Bloggers will be joining the Samsung torch relay truck on key dates of the journey, capitalising on the unique access to tweet, blog and create stories that highlight towns and cities across the UK.

There will be live tweets from consumer site @VisitBritain, where VisitBritain’s corporate page will post a tweet a day to celebrate the 70 day marathon with each tweet offering insightful information about the area it will be passing.

VisitBritain will also be producing an app on Love UK which will enable all fans to pass virtual flags around the world. Users will be encouraged to keep passing the digital flag to Facebook friends in an attempt to build up points. The flag with the most passes will win a prize provided by one of VisitBritain’s key strategic partners.

Source: www.visitbritain.com

The 1st Wikipedia Town - Meet 'Monmouthpedia'

Monmouth in Wales has become the world's first "Wikipedia town".

The project is called ‘MonmouthpediA‘ and was created after Wikipedia UK and Monmouthshire County Council teamed with the city's library, museums and volunteers to work on the project. The entire town has been behind the project; partners include 200 businesses, several universities and nearly every school and community group in the area. The project has been in the works for six months, helped along by the local council's installation of town-wide free Wi-Fi. Talking about the power of willingness.

Visitors will be able to use smartphones to scan barcodes at points of interest in Monmouth in Wales' southeast, instantly bringing up a Wikipedia page about the landmark on their phones, in whatever language they are set to. Hundreds of articles about the life and history of the town will be available online in more than 26 languages, from Hindi to Hungarian.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9guSj8fFAg]

The town has now installed over 1,000 QRpedia codes all over the town. This includes ceramic or metal plaques on public buildings, as well as smaller labels for inside buildings, and for labelling particular objects. And local shops also have glass stickers in their windows to give information on their professions.

As the 'official' Wikepedia page states :

"MonmouthpediA aims to cover every single notable place, person, artefact, flora, fauna and other things in Monmouth in as many languages as possible. Monmouthpedia belongs to and can be contributed to by everyone. It involves people from all around the world collaborating to share their knowledge through text, photos video and audio Wikipedia gives our work a global audience. We are the first town in Wales to have free and open wifi available to everyone. We use QRpedia codes around the town to give people easy access to content in their own language."