“Kiss and Tell” online video aims to attract younger crowd to Valley
The Greater Palm Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau is always looking to promote visitors to the Coachella Valley, and their latest campaign targets a very specific younger demographic. The Desert typically gets stereotyped as an older community, but in a recent online social media campaign called “Kiss and Tell”, the Greater Palm Springs CVB sells the Valley as a romantic getaway for the younger crowd. Scott White, President and CEO of the CVB, hears the misperceptions. “‘We’re an older community, there’s nothing to do here, it really kind of dies at 7 o’clock’ and so forth,” said White. “So we realized that that was far from the truth.”
His organization looked at the research and wanted to change the perception about the Coachella Valley. White turned to Pacific Park Creative to make an online video with full creative control. He outlined romance and nightlife in the area, and Pacific Park Creative ran with it to come up with “Kiss and Tell”, a near-three minute online video that promotes the area through a story of a young woman meeting up with an international traveler.
The video features plenty of businesses across the Greater Palm Springs area. Some view the video as sultry, while others embrace the sizzle as a different way to showcase the Desert Oasis. “I don’t think sultry’s bad,” said LuLu California Bistro owner Jerry Keller. “And I don’t think that having an aura of a place where you can come experience some nice new fun things, I think that’s great. Everybody’s looking, especially the younger people, are looking for a new adventure.”
Riviera Hotel general manager Marco Perry, whose business was also featured, chimed in as well. “Well, I think the title of the video says it all. It’s Kiss and Tell. Where as, there might be a destination also in the desert that talks about what ‘stays there stays there’. And I think this is a clever way to say, you know, it doesn’t have to stay there.”
White believes the video is already doing its up by creating conversation and garnering over 1,000 views on YouTube in the past two weeks. He added, “we’re not expecting everyone to love the video or like the video, and that’s fine. We’re going to have other videos that appeal to them and to different audiences. And again, I go back to, we have to have that kind of different style and messaging that’s going to appeal to different people about the destination.”
The “Kiss and Tell” video is the first in a planned five or six marketing campaign. The video is also in the process of getting cut down to 30 seconds for a commercial in the near future.
