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Virginia is for Lovers announces launch of Crush Friday

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virginia is for loversVirginia Tourism Corporation announced the official launch of its new Crush Friday marketing campaign. The announcement coincides with U.S. Travel’s “Project: Time Off” and National Plan for Vacation Day, the day encourages Americans to plan now to take vacation throughout the year. The Crush Friday campaign includes a brand new landing pagevideo

, radio spots, banner ads and direct mail promotion as part of an effort to encourage more “millennial work martyrs” in the D.C. area and across Virginia to take a Friday off and “crush” it. The campaign will be amplified through a partnership with 25 participating Virginia communities, who then partnered with a minimum of five localities each. The total community impact includes more than 155 campaign partners throughout the Commonwealth. The campaign was concepted by students at VCU’s Brandcenter, and created by Richmond-based agency Elevation.
“We are thrilled to be supporting U.S. Travel’s Project: Time Off with our brand new Crush Friday campaign. The Crush Friday initiative is an engaging, creative, and collaborative way for Virginia localities to leverage critical marketing dollars to attract more visitors to the Commonwealth, increasing the economic impact of tourism,” said Rita McClenny, president and CEO of Virginia Tourism Corporation. “This program will also help to change the way millennials think about vacation and the importance of time off not only to their quality of life, but quality of work.”

“National Plan for Vacation Day is a great time to kick off VTC’s Crush Friday campaign, because it’s all about encouraging Americans to plan for time off,” said Caitlin Johnson, Special Project Manager for Virginia Tourism Corporation, who is leading the efforts in support of Project: Time Off. “The Crush Friday campaign aims to do the same by changing the mindset of the millennial work martyr. We hope to get them to realize that taking time off is necessary to being a more creative and productive employee. They should make their Friday count by trading a day in the office for a day experiencing Virginia.”

American workers left 662 million vacation days on the table last year. Of these workers, the millennial sub-set is the most likely to want to be seen as work martyrs. In an effort to be seen as valuable to the company a work martyr is the most likely to forego taking vacation days. In a recent report Project: Time Off identified D.C. as the most under-vacationed city in the U.S. by leaving 17.3 million vacation days unused. The VTC Crush Friday Program is designed to encourage the D.C. area millennial work martyr to give vacation a try. VTC and its industry partners aim to change that mindset and show the benefit that even one day of vacation can have. Virginia and their localities offer a call to millennials to take a well-deserved Friday and crush it.

The most effective remedy for American workers who want to use more vacation days is better planning. Yet just over half (54%) of households set aside time to plan the use of their vacation time each year. National Plan for Vacation Day, launched by Project: Time Off, is a call-to-action for Americans to stop making excuses and start making vacation plans.

Research shows that planners have a distinct advantage over non-planners. Project: Time Off’s The State of American Vacation 2017report found that planners use more of their time, take longer vacations, and are happier.

  • 52 percent of planners took all of their vacation time vs. 40 percent of non-planners.
  • 75 percent of planners were more likely to take a full week of vacation time or more at a time. Non-planners take significantly fewer days-zero to three-than planners at once (42% to 18%).
  • More planners report they are “very” or “extremely” happy with their relationships (83% vs. 70%), health and well-being (57% vs. 48%), company (57% vs. 51%), and job (59% vs. 50%) compared to non-planners.

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