Black Forest tourism: you’d be cuckoo to stay in Berlin!

Our campaign for Schwarzwald Tourismus holds a mirror up to Berlin.

A tourism campaign without romantic images?

Can a tourism campaign do without romantic images of rolling countryside and photos of shiny happy holidaymakers? The Berlin campaign developed by Saint Elmo’s Tourism Marketing for Schwarzwald Tourismus shows that it’s also possible to take a different slant.

Poster ‘You’d be cuckoo to stay in Berlin'

Why not try a change of perspective?

Rather than using images that make people yearn for the holiday destination, the Black Forest campaign adopts the perspective of the target group. The images show the depressing COVID reality in large cities and encourage the viewer to escape it.

How about a little irony?

The appeal lies in the ironic contradiction between the images and the accompanying texts – while the copy addresses holiday dreams, the images shot by Murat Aslan convey mundane scenes of everyday life in the big city. The typical ‘countryside haven of tranquillity’ is replaced by a Portaloo dumped behind the hedged area of a block of flats and ‘nature at your doorstep’ is swapped with pigeons in a stairwell.

 

Schwarzwald-Kampagne
Saint Elmo's Tourismusmarketing: Kampagne für den Schwarzwald
Saint Elmo's Tourismuskampagne für den Schwarzwald

With this creative approach, the campaign particularly wants to address the young, creative, travel-loving community in Berlin and inspire them to visit the Black Forest. The indirect message: You know yourself that there's much more out there than this. You’d be cuckoo to stay! – The word ‘cuckoo’ in the CTA and the Black Forest logo present the Black Forest as a holiday alternative for Berlin.

Saint Elmo's: Out-of-home campaign for the Black Forest

The right place at the right time

Saint Elmo’s Tourism Marketing developed the out-of-home campaign for Schwarzwald Tourismus especially for the German capital during the relaxation of coronavirus restrictions. It was launched in May 2021 and was accompanied online by locally targeted Instagram adverts. Our partner agency Mediaplus Berlin was responsible for target group-specific media planning for OOH advertising spaces as well as the campaign roll-out in Berlin’s trendiest hotspots.

Black Forest campaign 2021

So how was the campaign received in the Black Forest?

Hansjörg Mair, CEO of Schwarzwald Tourismus, and Dennis Pfisterer, managing partner at Saint Elmo’s and the creative mind behind the campaign, chat about it in our ON FIRE talk.

Lights, camera, action!

 

Tourismusmarketing ON FIRE
Saint Elmo's Tourism marketing

Saint Elmo's
Tourism

August-Everding-Straße 25
81671 München

T: +49 (0)89 46 23 72 0
E-Mail: office@tourismusmarketing.com

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