merit
In the fall of 2023, VisitLEX assembled a team from the University of Kentucky. Experts in astrobiology, computer engineering, linguistics, and philosophy devised a message that was blasted into outer space with a powerful laser. It promoted Lexington’s famous horses, bourbon, Bluegrass landscape, and friendly folks, alongside five images and a 12-second audio recording from a local blues musician. The message was encoded as binary pulses of light and aimed toward the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system 40 light years away, which is thought to contain potentially habitable planets.
While other messages have been sent into space, this was the first time humans have invited aliens to visit Earth—a polarizing idea that got the world talking.
The campaign was designed to capitalize on the public’s fascination with space and extraterrestrial intelligence (65% of Americans believe in life beyond Earth, Pew, 2021), and promoted Lexington’s famous horses, bourbon, Bluegrass landscape, and friendly people.
Over the last decade, VisitLEX has harnessed buzz-worthy creative ideas that speak to the heart of Lexington’s Bluegrass, bourbon, and Thoroughbred roots to become one of the most talked about destinations—and generated nearly 10 billion earned impressions while doing so. This strategy allows the brand to turn its modest marketing budget into millions of dollars worth of advertising value through earned media.
This campaign for VisitLEX, the Convention and Visitors Bureau of Lexington, Kentucky, had one primary goal; gain positive earned media attention for the city of Lexington. And boy did it deliver.
The campaign far surpassed its goal of earning awareness. It drove conversation about Lexington and challenged misperceptions about the state. Campaign sentiment was 88% positive, a remarkable 61% increase over the average conversation around the state of Kentucky during the same time period according to Sprout Social.
Lexington’s outreach to interstellar travelers attracted Earthlings in droves. The campaign generated 3 billion earned impressions and an estimated advertising value of $28 million. The stunt earned more than 1,100 placements, including the front page of the USA Today Weekend newspaper, and outlets in Australia, the UK, Italy, Portugal, and beyond.
In line with our goals, nearly every placement mentioned Lexington in the lead before explaining why the destination’s horses, bourbon, Bluegrass landscape, and friendly people make it the ideal place for first contact.
This campaign also earned major recognition for the local scientists and scholars who helped make the idea possible. Their names and quotes were featured in publications like the Washington Post, Popular Science, Forbes, and Fast Company.
Lexington is a progressive city with a vibrant, welcoming culture, it’s home to two major universities and ranks in the top 25 most educated American cities, according to the 2023 census. It ranks in the top 2% of U.S. cities for LGBTQ equality.
We were also named one of the friendliest places in the U.S. by Condé Nast in 2023 and Southern Living this year.
Meanwhile, Congress was holding highly publicized hearings regarding UFO reports that enticed the public with the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, and exciting new imagery from deep space captured by the James Webb Telescope fueled this fascination.
All of this led to an out-of-this-world idea for VisitLEX: Lexington, the friendliest of cities, would launch the world’s first interstellar tourism campaign into the cosmos and invite extraterrestrials to visit.
