DENVER - Mile High Holidays, the city's million dollar tourism marketing campaign, got off on a high note at a press conference with Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock joining "Frankie Valli" from the Jersey Boys in a rendition of the show's hit song, "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You." "Frankie" was portrayed by Shaun Taylor-Corbett, who will be playing the singer in the production of Jersey Boys at the Denver Center for Performing Arts.
Mile High Holidays is an integrated marketing campaign designed to market Denver as the ultimate holiday vacation destination for the period of late November through the end of the National Western Stock Show in January 2015. It is organized by Visit Denver, the City of Denver and more than two dozen other partners.
The campaign is targeted throughout the state of Colorado, including the Metro area, as well as key regional markets in adjacent states and includes radio and television commercials, direct mail, regional newspaper and magazine advertisements, RTD ads, newspaper inserts, digital ads, a dedicated website, public relations and social media promotions. Promotions also include advertising and public relations in Hispanic and Latino magazines, newspapers and websites. A total of $500,000 is being invested in the campaign, which through media partnerships and in-kind services will generate an advertising value of more than $1 million. The campaign includes a newspaper insert, as well as newspaper and magazines ads reaching six million people. There are 2,524 television spots on CBS4 and Comcast, coupled with radio advertising across the state.
The press conference was staged in the new Denver Center for Performing Arts "pop-up" Holiday Box Office store in Cherry Creek North. Located at 2771 East 1st Avenue (between Bose and Orvis), the festive new shop displays costumes from previous holiday productions and will sell tickets for a wide variety of holiday shows, including A Christmas Carol, Jersey Boys and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Mayor Hancock stated, "We all know the holidays are a special time of year for families, but they are also a crucial make or break period for many businesses in Denver. We hope a campaign like this will encourage families to get out and start new holiday traditions, while also supporting local businesses," he said.
Mayor Hancock encouraged everyone in the Rocky Mountain region to come to The Mile High City to see the Parade of Lights, attend The Santaland Diaries and other productions at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, ride horse-drawn carriages under a canopy of lights down the 16th Street Mall or Larimer Square, and view lighting spectacles such as Zoo Lights or Denver Botanic Gardens' Blossoms of Lights.
The Mayor also encouraged visitors and residents to "shop local," and support both Cherry Creek Shopping Center and Cherry Creek North as well as downtown stores in Larimer Square and at the Denver Pavilions, while also patronizing local artists and craftsmen in neighborhoods such as the Art District on Santa Fe, Tennyson Street Cultural District, Antique Row, RiNo, Golden Triangle Museum District, Old South Gaylord and South Pearl.
Richard Scharf, president & CEO of Visit Denver, said, "Dozens of Denver hotels are participating in the promotion by offering packages that start as low as $99." Scharf encouraged locals and visitors to access MileHighHolidays.com, where more than 500 holiday events are listed."
In its eleventh year, Mile High Holidays is a collaborative marketing program to increase the overall number of visitors to Denver in the traditionally slow period of November through January.
The joint campaign will allow the partners to reach more people than anyone could reach on their own with information about Denver's holiday activities.
One Website, Many Partners:
As part of the cooperative Mile High Holidays promotion, Visit Denver created one comprehensive website, MileHighHolidays.com. The website individually brands every week of the holiday period so that prospective visitors can easily see what's happening during the period they are coming. "We know the holidays are busy and that many people have limited free time," Scharf said. "So we arranged the website by weekend. This makes it easy to see what weekend they have family coming in or when they have a break in their schedule, and see exactly what is going on just for that time period," Scharf said.
The website has information about holiday events, from the Parade of Lights and museum exhibits like Brilliant: Cartier in the 20th Century at the Denver Art Museum to performances at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts such as A Christmas Carol, Jersey Boys and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The site also includes lists of restaurants open on Thanksgiving and Christmas for those who don't want to cook.
"In Denver, we are fortunate that our holiday season extends through the end of January," Scharf said. "MileHighHolidays.com contains information on all the traditional holiday events, as well as New Year's Eve packages and the annual fireworks on the 16th Street Mall, and then we go right into events around the National Western Stock Show," Scharf said.
