Juniors in the Tippie College of Business Marketing Institute created advertising campaigns for Travel Dubuque to promote the outdoor recreational opportunities in the Dubuque area, with a particular focus on attracting mountain biking enthusiasts to the area's growing trail infrastructure. 

Marketing Institute teams competed against each other to create an advertising campaign for Travel Dubuque to promote the outdoor recreational opportunities in Dubuque, Iowa. The ad campaign and its ads are meant to direct to a section of the Travel Dubuque website that will be dedicated to outdoor recreation information.

In addition to the ad campaign, the Marketing Institute teams drafted the framework of the website content to feature the area’s recreational activities offered and encourage day-trip and weekend-trip opportunities for visitors to Dubuque. The look and feel of the advertising materials were made to be consistent with existing Travel Dubuque branding and are intended to reach a broad audience; however, one of the target audiences is mountain biking enthusiasts.

Travel Dubuque has been collaborating with non-profit called Tri-State Mountain Bike Riders (TMBR). TMBR has been very active in building mountain biking trails and expanding infrastructure in the area.  Like just about everything these days, mountain biking has a devoted consumer base. The idea behind this project was to do some “destination marketing” that connects to the existing Travel Dubuque brand. The target audience is enthusiasts from throughout the Midwest and beyond.

The teams also identified some appropriate outlets for these advertisements to effectively sell the area as a destination for mountain bikers / outdoor enthusiasts.  In addition to featuring the specific outdoor opportunities, the campaigns aim to show the target audience activities that could round-out a person’s day or weekend trip to Dubuque (e.g. visiting local breweries, museums, historical landmarks, and so on).