Sedona may not be interested in marketing this year, but marketing is still interested in Sedona.
During Sedona City Council’s July 28 meeting, council members and representatives for the Sedona Chamber of Commerce tried to hammer out what exactly a year-long pause in destination marketing should look like.
It is possible as the discussion was taking place, NBC was broadcasting a 30-second commercial that mentioned Sedona to its 13.5 million average viewers during its broadcast of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Games.
The ad, called “How to Start a Vacation,” features a brief clip — a second or less — of someone typing, “things to do in Sedona,” into a Google search field.
In the background, there’s a photo of the Milky Way positioned above Cathedral Rock’s spires taken by Chandler photographer John Sirlin.
It’s a brief nod to Sedona, but each time the commercial runs, it is potentially seen by millions of viewers tuning into the Tokyo Olympics.
According to the New York Times, ad buyers estimated before the Olympics that a 30-second slot during NBC’s primetime coverage would cost about $1 million.
We could not determine how many times the ad has been shown during the Olympics, however, the ad has been viewed 8.5 million times on Google’s YouTube channel since it was posted July 10.
The apparently unsolicited attention for Sedona, underwritten by the fifth largest company in the world, highlights the challenge a destination faces in managing its own image and marketing.
According to iSpot. tv, the commercial was created by PHD Media, a “global communications planning and media buying agency” with U.S. headquarters in New York. The company did not respond to a request for information about the inclusion of Sedona in the ad.
The “How to Start a Vacation” ad is part of a series of commercials based on the observation that the phrase “how to start” increased in popularity on the Google search engine beginning in April of 2020, near the start of the COVID- 19 pandemic, and has continued to grow since.
The phrase in the ad, “things to do in Sedona,” also began a steep increase in popularity beginning in April 2020, which could be a reason for Sedona’s inclusion, but representatives for the ad company could not be reached for confirmation.
Chamber President and CEO Candace Carr Strauss said she was not contacted about the ad, and has reached out to a fellow U.S. Travel Board member with Google Travel to learn more about Sedona’s inclusion in the ad.
Strauss liked the way Sedona was represented in the ad.
Though not involved, Strauss said the portrayal “positions the destination very well with the image of our starry skies. We are an International [Dark-Sky Association] Dark Sky Community, including the city of Sedona and unincorporated Big Park [Village of Oak Creek] along with the city of Cottonwood.”
“It is an extremely well done and inspirational spot. I am honored that Sedona was included,” Strauss said.
