Cabarrus County CVB Wins a Pair of DMANC Marketing Awards

(October 2, 2012) – Concord, NC – The Cabarrus County Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) is proud to announce that it is the recipient of two awards from the Destination Marketing Association of North Carolina (DMANC). The Cabarrus County CVB won a Platinum award for Best Marketing Initiative for its promotional use of the internet and social media in promoting a concert event featuring Tony Lucca. The bureau also won a Gold award for Best Print Advertising, Leisure for its “Yep, this might be heaven” ad campaign focused on motorsports and “Where Racing Lives – Cabarrus County, NC”. The awards were presented to the Cabarrus County CVB at the North Carolina Tourism Leadership Conference held September 26 – 28 in Charlotte.

“We are excited and honored to receive these awards for our marketing efforts,” said Donna Carpenter, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Cabarrus County Convention and Visitors Bureau. “Our marketing team does a tremendous job promoting Cabarrus County as the tourist destination in the state of North Carolina. On behalf of our team, board of directors and partners in Cabarrus County, I’d like to congratulate Michael Bonoffski, Senior Vice-President of Marketing and Communications for his hard work in helping the CVB win these prestigious awards from DMANC.”

For the Best Marketing Initiative, the campaign featured Tony Lucca (from the NBC TV hit show – The Voice) who performed a concert at the Events Center of Concord at Great Wolf Lodge, which was designed to increase awareness of Cabarrus County CVB initiatives and increase fan and visitor interaction via the social media platforms of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The result was a sellout crowd of 200 people in attendance. In addition, the Cabarrus County CVB was able to utilize the popularity of Tony as he tweeted to his over 500,000+ followers about Cabarrus County, the NC Music Hall of Fame, Great Wolf Lodge and Charlotte Motor Speedway.

For the gold award for Best Print Advertising, Leisure, the bureau’s ad campaign generated over 6,000 qualified leads for those interested in visiting Cabarrus County, NC through placement in America’s Best Vacations magazine. The ad was also featured in US Airways Magazine which generated over 600,000 impressions (December and April issues). This resulted in the CCCVB’s web traffic increasing over 15% and 50% respectively.

The purpose of the Destination Marketing Achievement Awards is to honor and showcase innovation, best practices, creativity and outstanding efforts/results in destination marketing.