High Impact Digital Wins Marine Industry’s Neptune Award


Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show
Internet marketing division of Pierson Grant PR creates successful Instagram contest

FORT LAUDERDALE (April 12, 2013) – The Marine Marketers of America recently awarded its prestigious Neptune Award, recognizing excellence in marine marketing, to High Impact Digital, a division of Fort Lauderdale-based Pierson Grant Public Relations, for the best social media campaign. High Impact Digital created the winning “Instagram Fan Photo Contest” on behalf of the 2012 Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, the world’s largest in-water boat show.

The objective of the contest was to encourage creative, user-generated content with little or no barrier to entry for the boat show’s various stakeholders and to illustrate the widespread appeal of this huge show to the thousands of people who attend every year, as well as to those who exhibit their marine goods and services to a worldwide audience.

“Our goal was to use social media to create new excitement from a visual perspective by engaging exhibitors and attendees,” said Mike Fruchter, director of digital strategy for Pierson Grant’s High Impact Digital division. “With 757 boating photos submitted in one month, we were very pleased with the response.”

On behalf of agency client Show Management, the company that produces the show, Pierson Grant’s High Impact Digital division reached out to show attendees and exhibitors through Facebook and Twitter and invited them to post photos to Instagram while attending the show and to tag them with the keyword #FLIBS. All photos were automatically aggregated in real-time to the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show Facebook page. (https://www.facebook.com/fortlauderdaleboatshow). Outreach across social media and traditional marketing platforms generated extensive engagement on the show’s social media sites.

The top 25 photos with the most Likes won subscriptions of their choice to any of the Active Interest Media publications, which are owned by the parent company of Show Management. These popular publications include Sailing, Yachts International, Soundings, Power & Motoryacht, Yoga Journal, Woodshop News, American Cowboy, Backpacker and other popular outdoor publications.

Formed in 2007, Marine Marketers of America is the association of marketing professionals who specialize in publicizing, promoting, showing, advertising and selling the products, services and causes known collectively as the “boating industry.”

Show Management has made the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, the Yacht & Brokerage Show in Miami Beach and the Palm Beach International Boat Show three of the world’s largest in-water boat shows. In addition, the company has developed the St. Petersburg Power & Sailboat Show and Suncoast Boat Show in Sarasota into two of the largest in-water boat shows on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

For more information, call (954) 764-7642 or (800) 940-7642, or visit ShowManagement.com. “Like” the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show on Facebook at facebook.com/fortlauderdaleboatshow, follow the show on Twitter at twitter.com/boatshowupdates, and tune into Boat Show TV at youtube.com/showmanagement.