Advertisements touting Michigan as a summer vacation destination have begun running in key markets across the state and the Midwest.
Travel Michigan plans to spend $16.7 million on the 2022 warm weather travel campaign using the iconic Pure Michigan theme.
TV ads will run through Aug. 31 in out-of-state markets that include Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Fort Wayne, Green Bay, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, South Bend, Toledo, Atlanta, Louisville and St. Louis. In-state ads will appear in Alpena, Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Marquette and Traverse City.
The summer travel campaign also will feature online video and digital, social media and radio ads, plus 96 static billboards in regional and in-state markets from April 11 through May 8. A double-decker bus in downtown Chicago also will display a Pure Michigan ad from April 11 through May 8.
“Spring is upon us, and with warmer temperatures ahead comes our new spring/summer advertising campaign, designed to remind audiences of the beauty and diversity of Michigan at summertime,” Dave Lorenz, vice president of Travel Michigan, a unit of the Michigan Economic Development Corp., said in a statement “We continue to evolve the ways we inspire travel to, and within, the state, by sharing our diversity of people and places using a variety of new techniques to amplify the message about Pure Michigan as the perfect warm-weather vacation destination.”
Narrated by actor and comedian Tim Allen, new television ads this year promote Michigan as a destination for golfers and outdoor recreation.
The campaign includes 22 travel industry partners that contributed $1.5 million.
An annual analysis of the Pure Michigan promotion concluded that the summer ad campaign influenced $2.2 billion in traveler spending in Michigan that generated $142 million in state tax revenue in Michigan.
Travel Michigan is rebooting the Pure Michigan campaign this year after the promotion was largely silent in 2020 in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and scaled back in 2021.
The state’s budget for the current fiscal year included $30 million for Travel Michigan to run the Pure Michigan campaign. Travel Michigan last fall and winter put $3 million into a regional campaign to promote the state as a winter travel destination.