Gnome Roams Atlantic City

That cute little lawn gnome who shills for Travelocity is on a nationwide tour this summer. His last landing spot: Atlantic City.

Photo courtesy Travelocity.

Photo courtesy Travelocity.

Photo courtesy Travelocity.

In late June, Travelocity.com, a travel website where you can book flights, hotel rooms, and car rentals, launched a “Summer of Possibilities” ad campaign. Instead of just buying ad time and space, they also created a fantasy summer trip for their Roaming Gnome, an 18-inch tall lawn gnome they introduced five years ago as their commercial pitchman.  

To spread the word about his trip, Travelocity harnessed social networking tools like facebook.com and twitter.com. They threw in a competition, too: people voted on the gnome’s next stop by visiting votetravelocity.com.

The second “battle” pitted Las Vegas against Atlantic City. Vegas won—but barely. “If you just said Atlantic City versus Las Vegas, a lot of people would just assume Vegas over AC. But this proved there’s still a lot of life left in Atlantic City,” says Joel Frey, non-gnome spokesperson for Travelocity. Atlantic City lost by just 1,500 votes. “We knew somehow we’d get back to Atlantic City.”

When Philadelphia won its battle over Boston and Washington, DC, Travelocity gave the gnome (and two handlers from the company’s ad agency) a side trip to Atlantic City. While in town, the gnome rode the Rocker roller coaster at Steel Pier, dined at Buddakan, partied at the Trump Plaza Beach Bar and Pool at Harrah’s, and checked out the beach at night—posting pictures on Facebook and Twitter along the way.

As far as PR stunts go, it’s brilliant. Five PR people based in Atlantic City contacted me about the gnome’s visit, and I twittered about it via my own account. There’s been plenty of other media coverage, including a report in the New York Post after the gnome “married” Holly Madison, Playmate and former Hugh Hefner girlfriend.

“We’ve been cautiously optimistic,” says Frey of the campaign’s success. They don’t have sales figures yet, but the battles between cities are getting 80,000 votes per battle, and the gnome’s Facebook fan following has doubled. “We’ll see how it goes. It might be an annual thing,” he concludes.

Tags: Atlantic City | South Jersey | Twitter | Travelocity | Facebook | lawn gnomes