City of Wichita preps airport advertising effort

A campaign to draw travelers to Wichita Mid-Continent Airport will resume, city officials say, despite a four-month hiatus from the last $550,000 Ditch The Drive marketing effort.

Jessica Johnson, the city's marketing services director, says she expects to have an agency selected and plans for a new campaign approved by the Wichita City Council in early November.

That's after a panel made up of Johnson and representatives from the airport and its advisory board, the city purchasing department, Fair Fares Inc., and the city's air service committee select an agency to lead the effort later this month.

Johnson says the theme of the campaign may be different but its purpose is the same: Drive more people from inside and outside the city to use the state's largest airport.

That's first and foremost," she says.

Johnson says all advertising agencies and graphic design firms within Sedgwick County were notified of the bid process, which began Sept. 26, and encouraged to submit requests for proposal.

Branding Mid-Continent

On Thursday, the city ended the bid process for the airport marketing and image campaign. Johnson would not identify which firms had submitted RFPs.

The RFPs call for new campaign concepts and strategy apart from that of Ditch The Drive, she says.

Officials from Greteman Group, the city's third largest agency, hired to develop the Ditch The Drive campaign that ran January through June, said they were planning to submit an RFP.

"We're going into this with every expec tation that we'll help launch the second phase of this campaign," says Greteman Group vice president Deanna Harms.

Harms adds that her firm believes the "second phase" of the campaign should include making Mid-Continent "the brand of choice."

Johnson says the Ditch The Drive campaign succeeded in helping to increase the use of Mid-Continent's discount carriers AirTran Airways, Allegiant Air an

Frontier Airlines - which plans to turn its service to Denver over to Cheyenne, Wyo.-based Great Lakes Airlines Nov. 1.

"We feel it did great things for us," she says. I think we're ready to look at a new proposal."

Year to date, Mid-Continent's passenger volume is up 9 percent - from 857,824 passengers in August 2002 to 939,080 in August 2003 - according to the Wichita Airport Authority's latest figures.

Tim Austin, chairman of the airport advisory board and owner of engineering firm AM Consulting, says he believes a continued marketing effort to promote the airport and the city's low-fare service is "a very important element to the longterm success of Mid-Continent Airport."

AirTran's Tad Hutcheson says a continued airport marketing effort helps bolster the airline's own marketing and advertising.

Allegiant Air's Mark Peterson agrees.

"We've realized some very positive results," Peterson says.