Project
Mexico is annually one of the top 10 most visited countries by tourists from all over the world. Each year some 30-40 million foreigners visit Mexico’s many destinations. The nation is also in the midst of an ongoing war with drug cartels that are in a civil war with one another as well as law enforcement which lead to declines in the number of tourists visiting Mexico. The tourism industry in Mexico accounts for almost 8 percent of the nation’s GDP, generating nearly $80 billion annually.
The objectives were to combat the negative media coverage with a global positivity campaign to paint a more accurate picture of Mexico. Using strategic partnerships with expatriates living in Mexico along with government and NGO partners on the ground “in country” in 10 target countries we created a global news hub Mexico Today which published positive content on the Mexican culture, economy, environment, sports scene, and security in eight different languages.
Solution
Knowing it would be impossible to stop the flow of negative news about cartel violence; our strategy was to create a concurrent positive narrative in both traditional and social media by creating our own content so that visitors and people considering travel to Mexico were able to get a more balanced view of the country.
Created a full functioning content newsroom to develop and distribute positive content through an integrated news hub written and produced in eight different languages with partners from both Mexico and with strategic partners who were willing to help push the positive narrative in their own language and in their own terms to their own audiences.
Tourism continues to grow at more than 8% annually despite crime stories, health scares and natural disasters.