Marketing to be 'Dun Our Way' at Tampa Airport

City officials are hoping tourists seeing "Dunedin" flashed in front of them while picking up their baggage in the Tampa airport will spur them to visit.

Visit Dunedin, an ad hoc group of unpaid chamber volunteers on their way to becoming the official marketing arm of the city, is hoping to attract some of Tampa's tourists to the area using a meditated marketing campaign and the help of an $18,000 matching grant from the St. Petersburg-Clearwater Visitors Bureau.

City leaders approved Visit Dunedin's request for $5,000 in matching grant funds in Thursday's commission meeting so Visit Dunedin can launch the "Dun Our Way" campaign through airport baggage claim ads, new brochures and heavy Internet marketing. 

Dan Zucker, a marketing professional from Zucker & Zucker and also the Visit Dunedin committee chairman, shared strategies with city leaders July 11. Many of the strategies and concepts are suggestions from Wilesmith Advertising, the West Palm Beach marketing firm who designed the wavy "E" Dunedin logo that will be used in all promotional materials and advertising campaigns, Zucker told leaders.

Now that Wilesmith's part in marketing Dunedin is ended, the city's economic development office is left spearheading the remaining effort.

Zucker said the grant money, which must be matched dollar for dollar, will go toward a year of advertising Dunedin's "Dun Our Way" campaign on half of the 32 LCD screens in the baggage area at Tampa International Airport.

"So every other screen, you'll see us on there," Zucker said. 

The remaining grant money would be used for printing new brochures and an aggressive online advertising presence on TripAdvisor.com. The deal with the travel website would allow Visit Dunedin to target any Tampa Bay area searches and push potential travelers to VisitDunedinFL.com.

Zucker told city leaders the St. Petersburg-Clearwater Visitors Bureau is impressed with Dunedin proactive approach to capitalizing on tourism as an economic driver, especially from D.T. Minich, executive director.

"He is very pleased to see what we're doing as a community, because no body else is doing what we're doing in any other city around," Zucker said.