Marketing Magic

This semester, I am in a Strategic Communications Case Study course. In this course, we analyze communications campings from organizations and companies and determine what the company did well, and what it could have done better. One of the most fascinating cases we analyzed this semester related directly to this course. The case was called “Destination Salem”, and it discussed the city of Salem’s communication and public relations strategy to increase tourism in the city. I was reminded of this case when Professor Izzy presented her experience recently visiting Salem. I’d love to share a little bit more about this case and some of my major takeaways from this communications campaign in relation to our course.

This effort to revitalize Salem’s tourism industry was led by the mayor’s office and centered around expanding tourism beyond the Halloween season. As Professor Izzy highlighted in her presentation, Halloween is one of the busiest tourism events for Salem as it is associated with the witch trials, and it is greeted every year with mixed reactions from the locals. One goal of the campaign was to draw more attention to Salem’s origins as a burgeoning seaport and its history of trade and pirates.

As we learned in class Salem Town’s success as a seaport was a cause of contention between it and Salem Village, as Salem Town grew into a far more prosperous city because of sea trade and its harbor. However, today the city wanted to honor both sides of its history. The Destination Salem team set about doing this by creating a variety of visitor itineraries, some of which centered around the witch trials, and others that related to the city’s maritime history. It then pitched these itineraries to journalists who featured them in newspapers around the country.

Another goal of the campaign was to increase the number of international visitors to Salem. The Salem witch trials are a fascinating part of American colonial history, but they are also storied enough to attract the attention and interest of people from all around the globe. The city knew Boston was a big center for international tourism, and began advertising how accessible the city was from Boston— including messaging in their campaign that Salem was only a brief ferry ride from Boston’s shore. They even advertised the non-stop flight from Japan to Boston, and then the ferry ride from Boston to Salem that could bring international visitors from Japan to Salem’s streets.

In a particularly creative move, the city also redesigned a new logo to capture the dual history of Salem as a place with a rich maritime history, and as the site of some of the world’s most famous witch trials. As the photo above shows, this logo was designed to look like a sailboat, and as a pointed witch’s hat, displaying the multifaceted legacy of the city. The slogan “Still making history” was also paired with the logo to emphasize that Salem is not merely a city with a fascinating past, but a promising future.