Brad Costanzo breaks down a native ad for Alaska tourism on The Points Guy, showing how a headline about devastating tourist losses hooks readers, then flips to opportunity. The ad buries its disclosure, teases specific details like Juneau's 94% cruise dependency, and uses soft calls-to-action to feel like discovery rather than sales.
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So I wanted to make a video for anybody like me who loves innovative advertising and marketing. And I stumbled across an ad today and it really surprised me and I was blown away because it was completely unlike other, what we call native ads that I've seen before, where you usually can smell an ad coming from a mile away. I'm going to share it with you right now. So let me show you what I clicked on. I don't even remember if this was an ad. I think it was it somewhere in Google and I just, it looked like a piece of news. And it's, it's here on the points guy which talks about, you know, how to maximize your credit card points and travel, etc. And the headline that caught my eye was it's just been devastating. This state could face an entire year with almost no tourists. So it immediately piqued my curiosity and I'm like, well, which state? Right? And also when you think about news, I mean, bad news sells. So this was a really, really good curiosity inducing headline. And what else I'm going to show you on this that it makes really good use of is the idea of discovery. So as, let me bring that up. As consumers, as people, one of the things that we love is discovering new things. We love to discover things that other people don't know about and feel as though we're, you know, we're kind of on this treasure hunt and that is successful. And anytime you can give this, if you're writing copy or doing marketing or messaging, it can be really powerful if you give the people the feeling that they discovered you or your brand or your product. Right? So in this case I want to discover first. Well, which, what is it? Which state is it? My state. And I go start reading and I say, okay, just a few months ago, Premier Alaska Tours. So immediately this tells me that it's Alaska and maybe I'm in the mood for a, an Alaskan vacation, right. Maybe I'm not. But it just satisfied this curiosity. And as I start to read on, I'm seeing it's all negative, right? It's just negative, negative, negative. So Alaska is going to have some troubles. Coronavirus obviously had some troubles here or cause some more troubles. This is a major deal. You know, Juneau gets 94% of its visitors from cruise ships. They just won't be coming this year. A year without cruise ships. And keep this in mind, if I go back up top, you'll see an advertiser disclosure here and here. So most people don't pay attention to this as an advertiser. I do, but. So I'm already paying attention to, okay, well, what are they going? When are they going to switch this over to the positive side? Now they talk about last year without cruise ships. They keep on going, and they are just twisting the knife into Alaska's tourism industry. And the whole time, keep this in mind. What I'm thinking as a potential consumer is, huh, if they're almost not going to get any tourists, and then I see it's Alaska. If I've ever wanted to go to Alaska, which I have, I'm immediately starting to. Or not even subconsciously think, I wonder if there's a deal here, if there's not going to be any there. Maybe they're desperate and motivated to give deals. I'm going to keep reading. To discover if an opportunity actually exists. Right. I'm on the hunt. Treasure hunt. The impact on Alaskans, it still doesn't satisfy me. It's keeping me. It's keeping me in suspense, right? Revenue was down, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of people think it's nothing but chains at these cruise ports. I'm just gonna go down now. It starts to slowly creep in to give me hints that there may be something for me, right? Alaska without the crowds. That's a benefit for travelers who do go. You know, it could be an extraordinary time to visit. So now they just flipped it over in the positive. Without cruisers, you know, visitors will find all of these things that haven't been crowded, at least for decades. Not everything will be open, but that's okay. A lot of other things will. Now down here, our community is open. It's not going to be like it always was, et cetera, et cetera. And I'll put a link to this somewhere, wherever I'm posting this, and you'll see it. And now they start to drop in links to other expeditions and articles on their site. Now, it's just assuming you're going to go, here's the new rules of Alaskan travel. But one of the things I love, and this is it, right? So one of the things I love about this is they do not overtly try to sell it to me. They let me. They give me just enough to explore and to kind of cross that T and dot that I in my mind going, okay, this is. This is something I should look into more because I might be able to get the deal of a lifetime on this. So the lesson that I took from this, the lesson that if you're an advertiser, if you're A business owner, if you do any native ads that you might be able to take from this as well is as opposed to just doing an ad that just says, hey, here's what I got, here's what it'll do for you, here's how to get it. Come up with a different angle that might create curiosity, that might. That might play to the way that we psychologically think about things that allow us to discover something, send us on a treasure hunt, let us connect the dots and do it in a way that it's almost fun to explore and discover. Because I immediately wanted to click on all of these things and see what was going on. But I even more immediately wanted to create this quick little video for all of my friends and marketing and advertising and other business owners to go, wow, this was really cool. Like, that's like I saw behind the curtain and I see how the magician is doing his work. I may have to contact this Gene Sloan guy, this writer, and just see how this was performing and give him a high five on this because this was top quality advertising. However, we don't know if it is because what really determines top quality advertising is, you know, did it get a result in this case? I think it probably will, but we'll see. Hope you like this. By the way, I'll put another link to another native ad that I found a couple of years ago and I really liked it. I put a link on my blog and you can check it out. If you have any other questions about this, feel free to shoot me an email@bradstanzomarketing.com and happy to chat. If there's any opportunities for you in innovation in advertising, talk to you soon.
