The Lake City Chamber/Visit lake City has recently received a Governor’s Fishing Opener media summary and event recap from Explore Minnesota.
All we can say is WOW!
By all accounts Lake City knocked this out of the park. All of our volunteers’ and staffs’ incredible work, combined with massive efforts from our state agency partners, made this event a watershed moment for Lake City, Lake City Tourism, and the Governor’s Opener event as a whole.
Please take a look at the document. It is a great recap of the event, filled with fun photos and lots of data. We owe a big thank you to EMT’s staff for putting this all together.
Here are some figures that floored us:
– The 2024 Governor’s Fishing Opener in Lake City, MN, netted 575 million media impressions and an estimated audience reach of over 25 million across print, broadcast, radio, and online.
– Lake City reeled in a record 158,471 estimated social media reach from the two social media influencers partnered with for the event, generating over 7,000 social engagements on posts.
– Media Row was booming, with over 28 media outlets attending in person to interview the Governor, Explore Minnesota, the DNR, Visit Lake City staff, and community members.
– GFO Social Media Highlights: Potential Impressions: 24,421,460 Total Engagements: 22,967 Volume of Posts: 4,704
– Governor Tim Walz said multiple times, in various circumstances, that the 2024 Governor’s Fishing Opener was the best he’d ever attended!
These are mind blowing numbers for our little community, and honestly, would take years, if not decades, for us to reach otherwise. We should be both ecstatic and proud.
It’s been a busy few years for our city, and we have had the spotlight on us time and again. From the 100th Anniversary of Water Skiing to the Minnesota Governor’s Fishing Opener, Lake City has risen to each occasion and made our indelible mark in the Minnesota tourism landscape.
We can’t let our feet off the gas now, we must continue this momentum through efforts and investment by working to cement Lake City as a must-stop Midwestern destination.
Visit Lake City and the Chamber will continue the work we have put in over the last number of years, building on our marketing successes, raising awareness for our beautiful little city on the lake, and helping to support the work of other Lake City organizations, businesses, and individuals engaged in community building.
We’ll leave you with a sign of the ongoing success of the GFO and other angling related marketing activities. Just last week we learned that Lake City was featured in Fishing Booker’s “9 Best Labor Day Fishing Destinations in the US for 2024”. Not Minnesota, not the Midwest, but the entire USA! For reference, Fishing Booker boasts 1.15 million unique visitors per month to its website and has roughly 150,000 followers on Facebook and Instagram. One may describe this kind of earned media as landing a real lunker. You can read the article here https://fishingbooker.com/blog/labor-day-fishing-destinations/
Ed Hoffman
