Brand USA, America’s first national tourism marketing organization, appointed Mcgarrybowen as its creative agency following a review, Adweek reports.
The public/private partnership, which also runs Discover America, spends an estimated $20 million to $30 million on measured media annually, with agency of revenue of between $1 million and $3 million. Brand USA chooses to award its marketing contract on a three-year basis, and in the past has worked with WPP agencies JWT and Geometry. Seventeen agencies, including incumbent Geometry, participated in the review, with an undisclosed number of finalists.
Brand USA was originally founded in 2010, after a decade in which international tourism fell by five percent. There’s at least some evidence that Brand USA’s marketing initiatives are helping to reverse that trend. Adweek cites Oxford Economics, whose numbers show that from 2013 through 2014, “Brand USA’s marketing initiatives have helped attract more than 2 million incremental visitors to America, ringing up nearly $15 billion in business sales and nearly $2 billion in federal, state and local taxes.”
Brand USA president and CEO Christopher Thompson told Adweek that “among the reasons mcgarrybowen was selected was because the agency understood the importance of tourism as an economic driver.” Mcgarrybowen’s work with Brand USA founding partners Marriott and Disney may also have been a factor.