Paradise Advertising and Marketing

Clients include convention and visitors' bureaus in Collier County, Daytona Beach, Santa Rosa County and the Orlando area, in addition to Space Florida and Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium in Sarasota.

Project

We Are Go Vacationauts campaign for Space Florida

Billed as the world's first multimedia space tourism campaign, the focus is on rich images, evocative of 1960s travel advertising, paired with calls to action. Campaign includes television, social media, posters, an interactive app and digital ads.

Awards: Two Gold ADDYs and four Silver ADDYs at the American Advertising Federation fourth district. Won 14 total awards, including eight Gold ADDYs and one Silver ADDY at the AAF Tampa Awards. Also won Best of Show at the Tampa ADDY Awards. “What this ultimately means is that Paradise produced the best creative in the Tampa Bay area in 2016,” Chief Creative Officer Tom Merrick told staff during a morning “doughnut toast,” after the February awards show, according to a statement. “There are a lot of really creative shops around here, so it's quite an achievement.”

The We Are Go Vacationauts PR Lunch Box is also up for a Gold or Silver ADDY in the Sales Kit and Product Information Sheets category June 10 at the national ADDY Awards gala in New Orleans.

Main objective: Space Florida, the state's aerospace and spaceport development authority, sought to combat an image that nothing was going on at the space coast. “Our goal was to get people to consider adding space to their Florida vacation,” says Tom Merrick, the firm's chief creative officer. “That was our call to action. That was our theme throughout.”

Project features: The word Vacationauts came out of a brainstorming session. The team on the project, Merrick says, then set up a “giant Google doc” with ideas. “Everything just launched from that term,” says Merrick, “pun intended.” Part of the project had a retro, Buck Rogers feel and look to it. For posters, says Glenn Bowman, Paradise creative director and digital director, the idea was to use vibrant orange, purple and blue colors, to help the message pop.
The videos were designed to bring a sense of adventure to a space program vacation. One popular spot features an astronaut in a spacesuit with kids building sandcastles on a beach, recruiting children and parents into “We Are Go Florida's Vacationaut” program, and the revised WeAreGoFL.com website.

Challenges overcome: One of the first challenges the team at Paradise addressed was all the noise that comes in tourism marketing, namely competition from a certain amusement park town less than an hour away. “We didn't want to blend in to what everyone else was doing,” says Bowman, a graduate of Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota.
Another challenge, says Merrick, was to push some limits — without pushing too much. Space Florida officials, says Merrick, were on board with the campaign, financially and philosophically. “Some parts of the project don't look like what people expect space ads to look like,” Merrick says. “But the client saw it as the thing that had always been missing.”

Impact on firm: The project took about six to eight months to complete, with several people working on it regularly. The recognition from the slew of awards is a nice public acknowledgement of the work, says Merrick. He was a longtime executive at Syracuse, N.Y.-based Eric Mower and Associates, where he helped oversee a 250-employee firm in eight offices, before he joined Paradise in 2015. “It was an important campaign for us that showed a range of styles we are capable of,” Merrick says. “It's the kind of work if I had seen someone else do, I would be jealous of.”

Paradise's Full List of 2017 District Level ADDY Awards
• Gold: “We are Go — Vacationauts,” Cross Platform, Integrated Advertising Campaign Regional/National - Consumer
• Gold: “We Are Go — Vacationauts,” Online/Interactive Mobile App for Space Florida
• Silver: “We are Go — Vacationauts,” PR lunchbox for Space Florida (Sales Kit/Product Information Sheets)
• Silver: “We are Go — Vacationauts,” Posters for Space Florida (Out-of-Home, poster campaign)
• Silver: “We are Go — Vacationauts,” Website Takeover for Space Florida (Online/Interactive, banner ad)
• Silver: “We are Go — Vacationauts,” TV spots for Space Florida (Online Film Video & Sound, Internet Commercial Campaign)

Paradise's Full List of 2017 Tampa Bay ADDY Awards
• Gold/Best of the Bay/Best of Show - Cross
Platform/Interactive Campaigns - Consumer Campaign-National
• Gold/Best of the Bay-Best Print Advertising -
Full Page - Single Unit
• Gold/Best of the Bay-Best Interactive - Apps - Mobile Apps
• Gold/Best of the Bay-Best Cross-Platform
Campaign
• Gold/Sales and Marketing-Sales Promotion - Sales Kit or Product Information Sheets
• Gold - Film & Video
• Gold - Out-of-Home & Ambient Media - Out-of-Home - Poster - Campaign
• Gold - Elements of Advertising - Photography - Campaign
• Silver - Online/Interactive - Social Media - Single Execution