Planning Awards: Fallon, Minneapolis (Silver)

AGENCY: Fallon, Minneapolis

Client: The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism

Brand: The Islands of the Bahamas

Category: Service brand

Campaign Title: “Bahamavention”

Planners: Seth Gaffney, Aki Spicer

No category is more rife with conventions than destination advertising—conventions that, according to the planners at Fallon, don’t work. Not only do these conventions do little to differentiate one sun, sea and sand destination from another, they also do little to entice us to take a break from our everyday lives.

The thinking in this paper was simple and powerful: The problem is not that people don’t believe in the unique attributes of the Bahamas, but that they find it increasingly difficult to take a vacation in the first place.

“The paper illustrates a solid consumer insight that Americans feel like they are vacation-deprived [and an] unconventional strategic approach. The campaign [avoids] conventional … imagery that makes communication for many … destinations seem to blur together,” says judge James Shuttleworth of DraftFCB, Chicago.

By identifying a real and obvious truth, the planning team was able to make Bahamas synonymous with the benefit of “vacation rejuvenation”—and, since no one in the category had thought to do this, were able to own the idea.