Selling the Springs

Beginning in March, you’ll be able to see Pikes Peak all the way from Dallas. And Kansas City, Mo., too.

For the first time, Experience Colorado Springs at Pikes Peak — the local convention and visitors bureau — is targeting those cities with billboards and print advertising.

“The Kansas people like (Colorado Springs) because it’s not flat, and the Texas people like it because it’s not hot,” said Amy Long, Experience Colorado Springs’ marketing and membership director.

The billboards, three of which go up next month in each city, are part of the bureau’s new advertising campaign, which it presented to members at a Thursday breakfast. Experience Colorado Springs at Pikes Peak plans to spend nearly $1.3 million on advertising this year — about $108,000 of that on the three-month billboard campaign.

Kansas City and Dallas-Fort Worth are being targeted because residents from those cities send the most requests for information to the visitors bureau, and 70 percent of the people who request information end up visiting, Long said. In addition to the billboards, the bureau will buy ads in local lifestyle magazines in those cities and has a four-page advertising spread in a Colorado Avid Golfer magazine supplement that will go to 20,000 golfers in the Dallas area.

The targeted advertising is just one leg in the new campaign, which will also include $200,000 in Internet advertising.

Tourism boomed in Colorado in 2007, said Nechie Hall, president of Praco Ltd., the bureau’s ad agency. (Internet Honey is handling the online component of the campaign.) This year, however, the economy is weakening and tourism may soften.

“There’s a little bit of insecurity going on,” Hall said. “That doesn’t mean that people aren’t going to travel. It means that they’re going to be more discerning about how they spend their money.”

That’s no reason to stop promoting the region, however, Long said.

“People’s vacations tend to be the last thing that goes,” she said.

Long said the new advertising campaign would focus more on people and families than the scenic vistas featured in recent years. Although it’s not an explicit part of the pitch, Long said the guiding theme for the Pikes Peak region is the opposite of Las Vegas’ famous motto, “What happens here, stays here.”

“What happens here goes home with you, and you can be proud of it,” Long said.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0275 or awineke@gazette.com