Cookeville-Putnam County Chamber 2017 Chamber Annual Report | Page 10

Visitor DEVELOPMENT DIVISION
BEN PRINE, VICE CHAIR
Accomplishments & Highlights:
• Continued momentum in branding and marketing efforts focusing on pillars of outdoors, sports/fitness, motorcycling, and
arts/culture/culinary with a goal of increased sales & lodging tax revenues for Putnam County.
• Announced an official launch of VisitCookevilleTN.com during 2017 National Travel & Tourism Week. Launch was
accompanied by the launch of complementary merchandise, in partnership with Cookeville Reserve.
• Published the official Cookeville-Putnam County Visitor Guide, a 35-page print and digital resource, designed to inspire
travel and guide visitors to area attractions, dining, and more.
• Increased advertising/marketing and public relations strategy into drive and fly markets, both digitally and print, a
continued effort to build upon the branding campaign initiated in 2015.
• Partnered with Tennessee Department of Tourist Development to host content creators in participation of the Spring
“Match My Trip” Marketing Co-Op – resulting in 965 direct leads; 5,917,850 Facebook impressions; 4,805,670 Pinterest
impressions, and a 3.7% social influencer engagement rate. Content created was deployed through high level media buys
via tnvacation to markets such as Birmingham, Atlanta, Chicago, Indianapolis, Louisville, Dallas and Cincinnati.
• Also partnered with TDTD to launch the new tnvacation.com and retiretennessee.org, each with highlighted Cookeville-
Putnam County pages.
• Hosted national and international travel journalists and social influencers for FAM (familiarization)/press tours focusing on
both general interest and niche interest (e.g. motorcycles, outdoors, fashion/shopping, craft beer, etc.) media platforms.
• Represented and promoted Cookeville-Putnam County at travel & trades shows, e.g. Indiana Motorcycle Expo and UCTA
in the Upper Cumberland Home & Garden Show/ Stay & Play Tourism Expo.
• Launched an industry newsletter to communicate to area hospitality partners upcoming events, visitors’ bureau successes
and strategies, as well as to improve the customer service and knowledge of area tourism assets among local
frontline tourism professionals.
•Building upon the outdoor brand, hosted and coordinated filming of two episodes of
Fishing University to air in Spring 2018 on World Fishing Network, Sportsman and Outdoor
Channels with viewership of more than 63 million households, airing in all 50 states as well
as in 51 additional countries.