Florida Tourism Produces Original Amazon Prime Series as Marketing Goes Hollywood
Photo Credit: Life's Rewards is set at The Don CeSar hotel on St. Pete Beach, and is the first DMO-scripted and produced original series. Visit St. Pete-Clearwater / Courtesy of Visit St. Pete-Clearwater
Skift Take
Florida's tourism marketers are going the extra mile to beat the competition this summer: co-producing and launching an original series set in St. Pete-Clearwater and launching on Amazon Prime Video. It's a whole new tourism marketing frontier. Action!
When travel and the world shut down in 2020, digital consumption accelerated at a global level — platforms such as Netflix and Disney+ experienced up to 12 percent in growth in 2020, and internet usage spiked as much as 70 percent. It’s no surprise that the lines between work and home blurring even further drove viewership and subscriptions even higher.
Coupled with an anticipated boom in backyard summer travel around the corner, two of Florida's destination marketing organizations (DMOs) saw an opportunity in this streaming bonanza, taking an innovative tourism marketing approach to reach Americans just as they start booking post-vaccine trips.
Instead of streaming just ads, Visit Florida and Visit St. Pete-Clearwater scripted and co-produced an original series launched this month and streaming on Amazon Prime Video, as well as on YouTube and GoUSA TV.
“Life’s Rewards'' is a dramedy set entirely in St. Pete. Eight-episodes at 10-15 minutes each tell the story of Da
