
CAMPAIGN
We began work to highlight the local festival as the ideal time to visit the area, focusing on securing as many feature stories as we could for the month of March. In addition to bringing in as many journalists to visit as possible, we needed some additional unified efforts. We were told that many of the downtown restaurants get into the Cherry Blossom spirit featuring everything from pink tostadas and pink grits to Cherry French toast. But this information didn’t exist beyond hearsay. There was no official website to find out which restaurants participate or what they offer.
We initiated a Pink Provisions Trail, highlighting the rose-colored culinary treats that are created by local restaurants and bars in honor of the celebrations each year. Visit Macon created an app for festival attendees to be able to find exactly which restaurants feature pink treats and where. The following year, Pink Provisions evolved even further with the Pink Provisions Party- an actual food fair featuring all of the rose-colored bites and drinks of the festival that was attended by hundreds of Maconites.

MACON
A Reason to Stay Longer
As a destination marketing organization, Visit Macon was keenly aware of their accidental tourism: prior to 2022, they were primarily a stopover on the way to and from Orlando, Florida for many travelers East of the Mississippi. So we set a goal to increase their mostly one night visitation to two nights so travelers would intentionally seek out the city and explore it as opposed to just use it as a place to rest.
When TK PR began working with Visit Macon in 2022, we identified a few potential tourism drivers: an undiscovered music city with a revitalized downtown, an emerging food scene and an imminent National Park. We also saw opportunity for the annual Cherry Blossom Festival to be recognized as the signature event weekend for the city.

RESULTS
In less than a year of working together, we secured Macon on eight different Best Places to Go lists for the following year.​ Since TK PR started working with Visit Macon and putting aggressive efforts into the promotion of the Cherry Blossom festival, visitation from more than 50 miles away is up more than 35% and the economic impact is almost double what it was in 2022 before we started with Visit Macon.
$6.2M+
AD VALUE
687M+
IMPRESSIONS
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Stories about the Cherry Blossom Festival and Macon in March
Stories about Macon as an under-the-radar music city
Pieces of earned media coverage since 2022




