St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport Filling PIE With Excitement and Buzz-Worthy Moments
With the airport code PIE, our clients at St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport are having a lot of fun leaning into their connection to the beloved dessert. In 2023, Starmark helped them launch the Everyone Loves PIE campaign and encouraged travelers to “Travel Sweeter with PIE.”
Taking a Bite Out of National PIE Day
Since the campaign launch, PIE and the Starmark team have felt National Pie Day — January 23rd — was ripe for the picking. We saw an opportunity to continue to build recognition of the PIE brand, grow our loyalists, and nurture our social media presence. To do this, we needed to create activations and a companion marketing campaign that would draw visitors to the airport and get hurried travelers to stop and enjoy the experience.
To ensure we had a strong turnout for a Tuesday morning event in the middle of January, we promoted PIE Day with organic and paid social posts, in-airport collateral, billboards, and a landing page. We also encouraged our airport partners to post about PIE Day and made it easy for them with provided copy and visual assets. The materials all leveraged the Everyone Loves PIE campaign and promoted the excitement that awaited them, including a trip giveaway and a mystery guest. We also reached out to local media to ensure we received TV and online coverage.
A National PIE Day Event With All the Trimmings
We built our inaugural Pie Day activation from scratch including an array of crowd-pleasers. We knew the right way to lean into the pie theme had to include the dessert itself, so we sourced miniature boxed pies, apple and cherry, and customized them with branded stickers that read, “Sweeter Travel Starts with PIE.” Airport brand ambassadors greeted guests with the airport’s signature friendly, easygoing vibe as they grabbed a delicious treat.
The Pinellas County beaches are famous for their pristine, sugary sands, so we commissioned a custom sand sculpture that would capture the essence of the airport and the Everyone Loves PIE theme. Utilizing 15-20 tons of sand, the artist created a masterpiece that both travelers and the public can enjoy in the Baggage Claim area.
Paul Teutel Sr., founder of Orange County Choppers and star of the reality TV series “American Choppers” was there to unveil the amazing sand sculpture and kick off the day’s events.
As if the pies, the sculpture and the celebrity emcee wasn’t enough, for guests, the cherry on top of PIE’s big National Pie Day activation was the chance to win a free vacation.
Results Too Big for a PIE Chart
Supported by a 6-week marketing lead-up, PIE Day was a huge success. PIE Day social media promotions covered X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram and yielded results that exceeded expectations. X saw the most impressive increase in engagement. On January 23rd, @iflypie received a 1,259% increase in impressions, a 1,600% increase in clicks and a 1,800% increase in likes.
Our Tuesday morning event had enough buzz to attract TV coverage from five area stations. PIE Day enjoyed a total TV market viewership of 467,430, which is worth $27,536.99 in publicity value. And 4,563 users submitted their contact information for the chance to win the free trip.
The Starmark team provided the big ideas, media and execution we needed to make our inaugural PIE Day the big event we were hoping for. They were attentive to every detail, ensuring a seamless activation that exceeded all the benchmarks, and we can’t wait to start planning the next PIE Day.
— Jeff Clauss, Director of Air Service Development & Marketing at St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport (PIE)