Building your identity and brand within a community can take time.

Each time a community member sees your brochure, your identity becomes further ingrained in their mind and hopefully, at some point, the brand awareness translates to them registering for a class.

On the other hand though, what happens when you are trying to reach a summer community that can only absorb this brand awareness for the few months or less that they stay in your community?

The City of Newport Beach has revamped their approach to summer camps to target summer visitors, as well as residents.

Though the City of Newport Beach has produced a separate summer camp brochure for the last ten years, they needed to find a cost-effective and efficient way to get this brochure in the hands of summer visitors. Even though using direct mail has been very effective for reaching local residents, it didn’t help attract the many seasonal tourists in the area.

The City of Newport Beach has a residential community of 86,000, but also, attracts 25,000 visitors a year. Not only are these visitors a relatively untapped enrollment source, they are the type of people likely to be looking for summer programming.

To tap into this new market, the City of Newport Beach did a simultaneous launch of a revamped brochure and a new, summer specific website, CampNewport.com.

The City of Newport Beach also forged a cooperative effort with the Newport Beach Visitors Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce, and various local vacation rental agencies. Virtually, all summer visitors to the area have contact with one of these groups and now, the City of Newport Beach has created a presence with all of them.

By forging these relationships, they were also able to garner considerable media attention and had their summer camps featured in local newspapers and websites.

The City of Newport Beach’s “Camp Newport Beach” brochure has a unique new design that oozes fun. Parents and kids alike are drawn to the awesome use of imagery and easy to navigate format. The interior of the brochure has new pages added that make it easy to find the perfect summer programming, including a removable calendar that can be easily hung on the refrigerator door!

The redesign is both visually stunning and practical, as well as seamlessly integrated with the new summer website.

In the first year of this redesign, the City of Newport Beach’s efforts are paying off! Between the summers of 2013 and 2014, revenue increased 10.5 percent and 497 more students enrolled in the summer of 2014. The City of Newport Beach recognized an untapped revenue stream and shifted their marketing efforts accordingly. This shift has really paid off and demonstrates the importance of knowing your audience.

For this visionary thinking and strategy, LERN is happy to present the City of Newport Beach with the Award for Outstanding Marketing!

Read about the other 2015 LERN International Award winners.