Greater Fort Lauderdale CVB Let’s warm up #Snowmaggedon2016 with a whopping dose of Sunny.

For the past few years during the winter months, Starmark has created a mega-wall billboard for Greater Fort Lauderdale CVB in the middle of Times Square — grabbing the attention of freezing New Yorkers with Hello Sunny messaging. This winter, we decided to take this big idea and make it even bigger.

 
Starmark’s media team researched and found several strategic Times Square locations that we knew would capture the eyeballs of the thousands of revelers celebrating New Years Eve in the heart of Manhattan, and also have a great chance of getting aired on television — particularly during the world-famous ball drop.

Once we secured those locations, we needed to find a way to make Greater Fort Lauderdale stand out in the sea of advertising mania that dominates Times Square. So the team designed creative that would pop — with bright colors, sunny images and catchy headlines like “Dear winter, gotta run” and “Goodbye flurries, hello fun.”

 
Not only did the billboards get picked up on live New Year’s Eve broadcasts with Ryan Seacrest, Carson Daily & Andy Cohen, and Anderson Cooper & Kathy Griffin, but a dose of crazy winter weather in the weeks following gave Greater Fort Lauderdale additional TV coverage on the Weather Channel and other networks, catapulting the number of impressions into the millions.

Call it the blizzard vs. beach effect, because social media lit up with consumer comments as well. People watching (and living) the snow coverage noticed, and the posts came rolling in. To quote one viewer, “Well played Fort Lauderdale, well played.” Indeed it was.