In January 2016, PPK was challenged by Visit Tampa Bay to develop a marketing initiative on a limited budget that would keep Tampa Bay top of mind amongst potential visitors. Our goal was to boost awareness of Tampa Bay as a travel destination by 10%, increase effectiveness of earned and paid advertising, and attract positive media coverage about Tampa Bay. The solution was to create an unconventional piece of promotional content with the power to multiply exponentially through earned and organic media.

With a nominal production budget, the most effective way to attract positive media attention to Tampa Bay was to create an almost unbelievable video with topical, brand-relevant content and work with an influencer to deploy it organically. Controversy immediately ensued over whether the event in the video was real or a hoax which led to an increase in engagement and shares locally, regionally, nationally, and eventually internationally – making it all the way around the world to Dubai.

Within hours of the original post, the video had amassed as many as 424,000 views, 75,600 reactions, and 6,300 shares on Facebook alone. The original influencer's post collected 4,000 views total, but earned media drove almost 420,000 in additional views in the first 24 hours. That is a 1,040% increase from earned media alone. The video garnered mentions on 15 local, regional, national, and international media outlets, and 2 radio station websites. Earned media coverage stretched from Tampa to West Palm Beach, Tennessee, Denver, Milwaukee, Delaware, Arizona, Hawaii and all the way across the world to Dubai.